29January 2010

Mr John Walker

By email:

Dear Mr Walker,

FREEDOMOF INFORMATION REQUEST: REF - 0017-10

Thank you for your request for information under the above legislation, dated 6 Jan 2010.

In that request you asked for the following information:

“details of all payments made by your department to TERI Europe and Dr R K Pachauri since 2004.

I should be grateful if you would give details of the dates, amounts involved, the purpose of the payments and the name of the FCO account that they came out of.”

I can confirm that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO’s) financial system shows no record of any expenditure in the UK to TERI Europe or Dr R K Pachauri since 2004.

However, responsibility for procuring goods and services isdevolved to individualDirectorates, Departments and Overseas Posts within the FCOagainst the provision of central guidance. This confirmation relates only to expenditure administered by the FCO centrally in the UK. In order to confirm this was the case globally, each of our 261 overseas posts would need to be contacted individually to obtain the details you requested, and collating such information would requireadditional resource which would exceed the current threshold for disproportionate cost. This is in compliance with Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act which makes provision for public authorities not to provide information where the cost of obtaining and providing the information would exceed an appropriate limit. The limit has been specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, and for central government is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one or more persons spending 3 ½ days working days in determining whether the Department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting it.

Should you wish to refine your request you may like to consider any particular FCO Overseas Posts that you have an interest in as this may help to bring your refined request withinthe scope of the appropriate limit. However, any refined request will not guarantee that it will be processed within the appropriate limit.

If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your request and wish to make a complaint or request an internal review of our decision, you should write to me () within 40 working days from the date our response was issued.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint or internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the complaints procedure provided by the FCO.

The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely,

Chris Peerless

Corporate Procurement Group