FOI release

Freedom of Information request (FOI 22/869)

Published 17 January 2024

FOI 22/869

30th August 2022

Dear

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request, dated 26 July 2022, for ease of reference your original request is attached to this email.

I can confirm that the MHRA does 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, gain access to and search email accounts of multiple colleagues at the MHRA using a range of search. We would also need to then peruse email threads to extract information that is only relevant to the scope of your request. To address the subject of past meetings, we would need to identify relevant items in sets of minutes from expert groups as well as the CHM, for full items this task can be completed with relative ease, however, outside of full items identifying other mentions for example of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, RECOVERY and COP-COV will take additional time. During the process of assessing the relevance of S.12 to this request we also completed an initial search for the minutes and this identified many (18) files. Based on all of the above, we consider that addressing your request in its present form, would take longer than 24 working hours to complete.

We would, therefore like to advise to narrow your request, and in the first instance rather than us specify a document or document/s to you, we considered it best to first ask if there is any documentation or correspondence that are priorities for your research? Once you have selected any priority areas, if any, we would suggest refining the scope to a maximum of 4 items on the list included in your letter. Please also note that discrete requests, being more straightforward for our staff to address for example, ‘CHM minutes of meeting of x date’, will place less of a burden on our resources and consequently are much less likely to fall foul of Section 12. Whereas, on the contrary, requests for email correspondence from multiple accounts will likely exceed the S.12 limit.

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.

We would like to thank you for your patience, and we apologise for not being able to contact you any earlier about your request.

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 will 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.

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

If you were to remain dissatisfied with the outcome of the internal review, you would have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Please bear in mind that the Information Commissioner will not normally review our handling of your request unless you have first contacted us to conduct an internal review. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

MHRA Customer Experience Centre