Dear Mr Sittampalam

You requested an internal review of the decision, conveyed to you by email of 10 December 2010, of the handling of your Freedom of Information request ‘Catholic Church contribution to Pope’s visit’ as well as specific concerns you have about the reply given.

I was asked to conduct the full internal review as I have not been involved in any way with thePapal visit and had not seen the documentation and files before conducting this review. I have therefore been able to review the handling and decision of your FoI objectively and without any prejudice.

I have now completed a full examination of all the material, both released and exempted, of relevance to your request. I have concluded the following.

1.Search for information

I have reviewed documentation and emails relating to the search and am confident that all the relevant people within and outside of the FCO were consulted and asked to search for information relevant to your enquiry. I have also personally conducted searches of a sample of files and not found any other relevant information and am therefore content that a reasonable search was carried out in relation to your request.

2.Use of exemptions

I am content that Section 27 exemption was appropriately used. However I do note that its use should have been more fully explained to you in the original reply to your request. In particular, the reply should have explained more clearly why this exemption was being used. The Catholic Bishops conference is a domestic organisation. However, the close and natural links it has with the Holy See mean that discussions relating to the Papal State Visit would inevitably involve communication between the Catholic Bishops Conference (CBC) and the Holy See and therefore communication between the United Kingdom and the Holy See. The FCO views communication with the Catholic Bishops Conference as communication with the Holy See. As explained in the FCO’s letter to you of 16 November, the Holy See is granted the same rights as all other with states with whom the United Kingdom has diplomatic links. As such, the UK would be concerned about the release of any material which would, or would be likely to, prejudice relations between the United Kingdom and any other state.

With respect to Section 29 being used, this too I believe has been correctly used as the negotiations of the final costs of the Papal visit are still ongoing and therefore the final amount attributable to the UK is not known. To fully disclose at this stage all the estimated costs would likely prejudice the financial interests of the UK as public disclosure of the estimated costs would undermine our negotiations.

Finally, Section 22 was correctly used as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had during the planning stages of the visit agreed to publishing in full all information relating to the State Visit at an appropriate future date.

Your specific queries

I have been through your various queries and have tried to answer them as fully as possible below.

1.“You have not confirmed or denied whether you hold informationrelating to various parts of my request. In particular:- How much has been received so far?- how much is still outstanding?- Are there any plans for interest to be charged?"

In the reply of 10 December 2010, it was stated that “Full costs and details of Government spending ….are still being calculated.” As the final bill is not known, requests for payment have not been made. Therefore in response to your questions, no money has been received so far and without a bill having issued there also cannot be any outstanding/late payments.

  1. “the claims of s22 and s29 are late as you did not send a refusal
    notice specifying them within 20 working days of my request”

I apologise for the delay in responding. However delays in responding do not rule out or deny future use of these exemptions. As explained above, I believe these exemptions were correctly used.

  1. “Please confirm that you intend to publish the entire redacted
    annex, and that you intended to do this at the time I made my
    request. If this is not the case, then any parts that were not
    intended to be published cannot be covered by s22”

Under the Freedom of Information Act, public bodies are not compelled to release documents but rather information. As such, the annexe will not be released but information from this annexe will be released in a simplified format that is easily understood. Furthermore, as referred to above, during the planning stages of the State Visit (i.e. before your request), it was agreed that the FCO would release costs once the final figures were known.

  1. “You don't provide any timescale for when you will publish the
    information. This weakens the public interest arguments against
    disclosure.”

We have not provided a timescale as we do not know exactly when we will be able to publish the information. As will be appreciated, s22(1)(a) of the Act states that information is exempt if the information held by the public authority is due to be published at some future date whether determined or not.As we have stated, negotiations on the final costs/ bill are ongoing and we do not yet know when these will conclude. As you point out the public interest element of Section 22 is around timing. Furthermore, the Act has this exemption precisely to allow public bodies to plan and manage the publication of information and that public authorities have a “reasonable entitlement” to do so. We envisage being able to publish the information soon, however are not able to, nor are we compelled to give an exact date or timetable.

  1. You have not provided a proper explanation of why s29 might
    apply. Please give more details of why disclosure of the data would
    be affect the costs. Again, I find it hard to believe that this
    applies to all the information in the annex.

As stated previously, the information in the annexe is still being interpreted and negotiated. A final ‘bill’ for the Papal visit is not ready yet. Therefore publishing the annexe now prematurely could result in a higher figure than necessary being charged to the UK Government.

  1. I still don't understand why s27 might apply to the annex you
    have redacted. You need to provide a proper explanation of how
    releasing it "early" might hurt international relations. It is not
    enough to claim that it "may prejudice" relations - you need to
    show that at the very least it "would be likely to prejudice" them
    and *then* you need to carry out a public interest test.

I hope that my full explanation above regarding the relations between the Catholic Bishops Conference and the Holy See answers this question. As we have repeatedly stated, the United Kingdom maintains diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Releasing sensitive information pertaining to ongoing negotiations with an organisation which has irrefutably close links to the Holy See might subsequently hurt our relations with the Holy See, particularly where that information may be subject to revision. Our relationship with the Holy See and more specifically the trust which the Holy See places on our relationship and the ability of the UK Government to respect the confidentiality of ongoing negotiations would be undermined by releasing information before our discussions have been concluded.

Secondly, I have seen the communication between all the relevant parties to your request and am confident that the public interest test was considered.

  1. Your late response is based on the claim of s27, and therefore
    you should have been able to justify its application to all the
    information covered by the request. Looking at the information you
    have now released, it is still not obvious to me why s27 might have
    applied there.

I trust this question has been answered by my points above.

  1. s22, s27 and s29 are all subject to a public interest test. There
    is no documentation of any proper balancing exercise that you might
    have performed, even though you delayed your response a full 20
    working days to perform the public interest test with respect to
    s27.

As I stated above in response to your question 6, having seen the documentation, I am confident that all the circumstances of the case have been taken into account whilst carrying out the public interest test.

In conclusion, I believe that all information relevant to your enquiry was either released or correctly withheld under appropriate exemptions. I do however believe that the replies given to you could have been clearer in explaining why these exemptions were being used. If you are not content with the outcome of this Internal Review you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely,

Millie McDevitt

Global Economy Group

Foreign and Commonwealth Office