Correspondence relating to the Innovation Fund and Future Hospital (FOI)

​​Request

Please provide correspondence between all members of the Council of Ministers (including sender, recipient, date, time, subject and content of the email along with attachments) between 12 April 2017 and today, 12 May 2017.

Please use the search terms Innovation Fund, Senator Philip Ozouf and Future Hospital.

Response

The attached emails are provided as a result of a search conducted with the parameters of Innovation Fund, Senator Philip Ozouf and Future Hospital. Where appropriate, information has been redacted using appropriate exemptions.

Email PDF 1

Email PDF 2

Email PDF 3

There were some attachments to the emails and the links below are to the documents which are already published.

2016 Year end carry forward report

Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel

Jersey Innovation Fund: Review of ministerial responsibilities January 2017

The names of some staff members have been redacted under Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the Law). Each redaction has been assessed and consideration given to the persons role, perception of their personal detail being provided in a public domain, how that would affect them personally and the justification for providing or withholding it. If it is considered they have an expectation that their personal detail would not be released and that any release may cause them unnecessary distress and anxiety, their personal details have been redacted. It is considered that to release this information would breach the first data protection principle as it would not be fair to disclose this type of information into the public domain. Furthermore, it is considered, in the absence of consent that, on balance, disclosure is not supported by paragraph 6 of Schedule 2 of the Law, thus none of the legitimising conditions for processing having been met.

In the period leading up to the debate on the funding for the new hospital, Ministers and senior members of staff need to assess the various options available to them. The authority is therefore withholding the release of a number of e-mails relating to the formulation and development of policy by the scheduled public authority (SPA) under Article 35 of the Law. Following assessment, the SPA has to decide whether, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. Although there is a need for transparency, accountability, financial and good decision making by public authorities this information relates to an ongoing situation. The SPA needs to retain the ability to consider and reconsider the assumptions and evaluations raised for the purpose of good government. For this reason it is considered it would not be in the public interest to disclose this information. The Government needs a safe space in which to rigorously explore and develop the best policy possible.

Once a policy is formulated and published, the public interest in withholding information relating to its formulation is diminished, however, the use of the exemption can be supported if it preserves sufficient freedom during the policy formulation phase to explore options without that process being hampered by some expectation of future publication.

Exemptions applied

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

Article 35 - Formulation and development of policies

Information is qualified exempt information if it relates to the formulation or development of any proposed policy by a public authority.