Repayments and purchase card usage of Senator Ozouf (FOI)

Request

A

I have reviewed the information already revealed by your office, but would like to know the dates when repayment was made to the States?

B

I request the total use of the states credit card from when the card was first issued to Senator Ozouf as well as when any funds were repaid to the states including dates of repayment.

Response

A

The response to this question is, at this time, qualified exempt under Article 36(1) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the FOI Law) due to an ongoing review. Following review, and subject to Regulation 1(a) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 (the “Costs Regulations”) with a specified cost limit of £500 (12.5hrs), we will attempt to provide this information before 30 September 2017 and it will be presented in a revised update to the following FOI request:

Ministerial purchase card (FOI)

As we are applying a qualified exemption it is necessary for us to consider whether the public interest is better served by withholding the information requested and it is not outweighed by the public interest in disclosure. On balance, it is our view the public interest is better served by ensuring the information provided is accurate and complete, which will only be the case once the review is concluded.

B

Where information is already in the public domain and is reasonably accessible to the public, a scheduled public authority is exempt from having to provide the information. We therefore apply Article 23 of the FOI Law to the information requested as it is already reasonably accessible at the following link:

Ministerial purchase card (FOI)

To provide information in addition to the date range already published would take us well beyond the time limit as specified in Regulation 1(a) of the Costs Regulations which is at a cost of £500 or 12.5 hours.

Exemptions and Articles applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 23 – Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.

Article 36 – Information intended for future publication

(1) Information is qualified exempt information if, at the time when the request for the information is made, the information is being held by a public authority with a view to its being published within 12 weeks of the date of the request.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant –

(a) of the date when the information will be published;

(b) of the manner in which it will be published; and

(c) by whom it will be published.

(3) In this Article, “published” means published –

(a)by a public authority; or

(b)by any other person.