Correspondence relating to the appointment procedure of the Bailiff (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the States Greffe and published on 01 March 2019.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

​Request

I would like to see the letter written by the Chairman of the Privileges and Procedure Committee to the UK Government about the appointment procedure for the new Bailiff and any reply received by Deputy Labey.

Response

The information relating to the above request is currently classified as qualified exempt under Article 41(1) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011. It may be re-classified and disclosed at a later date on receipt of permission from the United Kingdom government.

Exemption applied:

41 International relations

(1) Information is qualified exempt information if its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice relations between Jersey and –

(a) the United Kingdom;

(b) a State other than Jersey;

(c) an international organization; or

(d) an international court.

Justification for Exemption:

The public interest in respect of Article 41 is weighted in favour of maintaining the exemption unless equally strong countervailing public interest arguments favour the disclosure of the information. There is a public interest in transparency and it is desirable for governments to be accountable, however, the Chairman of the Privileges and Procedures Committee is entitled to seek advice from the United Kingdom government and ought to be free to either act on or disregard the advice received. In addition, to ensure that international relations between Jersey and the United Kingdom are not prejudiced, it is important that the United Kingdom government feel able to provide advice which will be treated confidentially and will not be made available in the public domain. For these reasons the public interest arguments in favour of disclosure at this time are not sufficient to overcome the public interest in maintaining the exemption.

Please note:

This response has been issued on behalf of the States Greffe, which is responsible for the information held by (and on behalf of) both itself and the States Assembly. Neither the States Assembly nor the States Greffe form part of the Government of Jersey and the Government was not involved either in the examination and retrieval of any information required for this response, nor in the drafting of the response itself.