Freedom of Information request on further data relating to the annual report for delivering high standards in medicines advertising regulations (FOI 22/637)
Published 27 March 2023
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FOI 22/637
9th May 2022
Dear
Thank you for your information request, dated 22 April 2022, where you asked for further data related to the annual report: Delivering High Standards in Medicines Advertising Regulation.
I can confirm that we do not hold the information that you have requested.
For MHRA advertising investigations, we do not hold statistical data by type of third-party advertiser or by which prescription-only medicine (POM) a third party may have advertised.
While we may be able to search records of individual advertising investigations for 2019, 2020, and 2021, it may not accurately identify all pharmacy businesses correctly, or the POM(s) they allegedly advertised.
Furthermore, in order to do such a search of records to retrieve any available information from individual investigation cases, we consider that this would take longer than 24 working hours to complete and we have also therefore 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.
We advise that you narrow your request by, for example, seeking information on the number of advertising complaints by third-party companies (ie, businesses that do not hold [a] Marketing Authorisation for [a] medicine[s] but that legitimately sell and supply medicines as part of offering a treatment service). I can provide you with the number of third-party complaints received, referred to another body for investigation, resolved and upheld for 2020 and 2021.
If you are not already aware, summaries of outcomes of MHRA advertising investigations are published on our website.
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.
Yours sincerely
MHRA Customer Experience Centre