Freedom of Information request on all emails from and to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (FOI 21-008)
Published 24 March 2021
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Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to your email. Please could you refine your request further, for example, by area of the MHRA or specific project rather than specific time frame?
Many thanks,
Pharmacovigilance Service Team
Vigilance and Risk Management of Medicines Division
Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Dear Pharmacovigilanceservice Team,
Thanks for your prompt reply.
In keeping with your advice under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, with regards to reducing the time taken to complete the FOI; please set a time frame of between the dates 01/06/2019 and 01/ 6/2020. I hope that this will be sufficient enough to bring the time down to within the 24 hours set by legislation, if not please do not hesitate to contact me so we can work together to bring the time down.
Thank you for your information request, dated 5th December 2020 where you asked for all emails from and to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
We can confirm that the MHRA has received grant funding from the Bill and Melinda gates Foundation for specific activities. We do hold some of the information that you have requested. However, we have also determined that the information is exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act and we cannot process your request any further.
Section 12 of the Act allows public authorities to refuse requests where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for central government is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 24 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
In order to process your request, we would need to identify all members of MHRA who have had correspondence with the Foundation and search their entire email history, extract these emails and review them for any confidential information and redact as necessary. We consider that this would take longer than 24 working hours to complete.
We advise that you narrow your request by, for example, by asking for details of a particular area of interest and timeframe.
Please note that substantially similar requests made within 60 working days of an original request can be aggregated into one for the purposes of calculating a cost limit, meaning that section 12 could still apply.
If you disagree with how we have interpreted the Freedom of Information Act 2000 with regards to your request, you can ask for the decision to be reviewed. The review would be carried out by a senior member of the Agency who was not involved with the original decision.
If you have a query about the information provided, please reply to this email.
Kind regards,
Pharmacovigilance Service Team
Vigilance and Risk Management of Medicines Division
Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU