Freedom of Information request on the legal challende by the Association of Children Damaged bu Hormone Pregnancy Tests (FOI 22/670)
Published 22 March 2023
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FOI 22/670
25 May 2022
Dear
Thank you for your email.
Please find below answers to the questions you have raised below:
The MHRA is currently facing a legal challenge by the Association of Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests. Under the freedom of information act please can you tell me how much the MHRA has spent to date on legal fees defending this challenge.
Unfortunately, we do not hold cost information for single cases. We pay GLD a quarterly fixed retainer for £71,700 including VAT, and a variable charge depending on the work GLD undertake on behalf of the agency. This charge is a single amount calculated by GLD for which we don’t have a breakdown. We have asked GLD to provide us with this information however we do not know if this is possible, and do not currently hold this information ourselves.
As a supplementary question - have you budgeted the full legal cost of defending this challenge?
We set our total Legal budget on an average of previous years’ spend as we do not budget on the basis of individual cases. The budget is done on the expectation that our legal requirement will remain roughly similar one year to the next. If costs exceed the specific legal budget, the agency would look to manage this within its overall budget.
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Yours sincerely
MHRA Customer Experience Centre