Gifts and Hospitality, travel and retention schedules (FOI)

Request

A

Can you provide the:

i) departmental gifts and hospitality register for all departments; 

ii) all departmental overseas travel costs; 

iii) the official engagements list with all external parties for the period of the last government.

B

Can you confirm whether this information is supposed to be publicly available and regularly updated and automatically published? If so, how frequently does and should this occur?

C

Can you confirm the archiving policy for documents from Departments and whether this is in fact taking place. If so, is there a list of what is sent to be archived?

Response

A

i)  Please see attached. Details up to October 2020 were published on www.gov.je in response to a previous Freedom of Information request. Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied. Please see the following link:

Gifts and Hospitality since 2010 (FOI)

Gifts and Hospitality April 2020 to June 2022.xlsx

Names have been redacted as it constitutes personal data. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

ii) The financial ledgers do not breakdown travel costs between local and overseas and would require significant manual filtering and verification to extract the data.  It has been estimated that to locate and collate such information would exceed the cost limitations under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information Jersey Law (2011) has been applied. 

In order to provide some data on travel costs, the figures below include all fights and hotel accommodation paid for by the Government of Jersey (and will include all travel undertaken by Ministers and other individuals in addition to civil servants and other public sector workers both locally and overseas).

Using HRG data and object accounts in ledgers for flights and hotel accommodation, and applying some basic filters (excluding Health and Community Services patient travel, Children’s Services travel and as many locally named hotels as possible), the following spend has been incurred:

In addition, please note that information as to “Over £500 Travel” is published on a 6 monthly basis on the Government of Jersey website and can be accessed via the link below. 

Cost of travel over £500 - Datasets - Government of Jersey Open Data (gov.je)

iii) A register of this information is not held. Under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, the scheduled public authorities are not obliged to manipulate or create new data in order to respond to a request. Article 3 of The Freedom of Information (Jersey) 2011 applies. 

B

There is no current policy in place to publish this information on a regular basis. 

C 

Details regarding the Government of Jersey’s Privacy Policies can be found using the following link: 

States of Jersey privacy policies (gov.je)

Yes, the Archivist appointed by Jersey Heritage works with each department to ensure that the necessary reviews are undertaken. Transfer forms are completed by sections within departments when transferring data to Jersey Archive. 

Articles applied 

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

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. 

(2) Despite paragraph (1), a scheduled public authority may still supply the information requested on payment to it of a fee determined by the authority in the manner prescribed by Regulations for the purposes of this Article.

(3) Regulations may provide that, in such circumstances as the Regulations prescribe, if two or more requests for information are made to a scheduled public authority –

(a) by one person; or

(b) by different persons who appear to the scheduled public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign, the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them.

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 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 2018.

(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 2018; and

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

3)      In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.