data access requests – Legal Babble

The original article in this blog post has been temporarily removed.

The original article covered the misconduct of a Social Worker employed by Wakefield Council, the medical effect the misconduct had on a pensioner under the Social Worker’s care and the efforts made by Wakefield council social services to supress the knowledge of this becoming public information or known to other institutions.

This is because there has been an application made in legal proceedings by the firm representing Wakefield Council.

The application covers removal of any data that may be used in those legal proceedings supplied by Wakefield Council including the statement of said Social Worker.

The firm concerned is Weightman’s of Liverpool, a shabby little firm that has thus far attempted to gain tactical advantage for its client via a series of underhanded methods, this being the latest.

In relation to the article which originally appeared on this page the firm obtained an order from HHJ John Hayes KC in the High Court to supress the content of the article.

Morris Hill appears to have a lengthy history of assisting local authorities to escape the consequences of their own misconduct.

The persons responsible for such questionable suppression of data in the public interest are Morris Hill and Jamin Lennard, respectively pictured here.

The suppression of content covered only matters which have not yet been discussed within legal proceedings. The dispute with the article does not cover the factual aspects of the post, since these are unarguable, but rather that it covers matters which have yet to be heard within proceedings and were drawn from statements in those proceedings.

However the firm sought to effectively redact the entirety of the article and render it meaningless by the removal of data and information contained within it which was not subject to a court order or part of proceedings and which was obtained from other sources. The amount of information that they sought to remove went significantly over and above that allowed for in the court order.

This is clearly to spare the embarrassment of their client the council and prevent further knowledge of clear misconduct in public office from being known more widely. The issues of freedom of speech, public interest and the importance of other persons being armed with knowledge of the misbehaviour of local authorities are not issues that have been considered.

The article will shortly return in its full form at the appropriate time.

You may well wonder why a legal firm representing a local authority that has consistently misconducted itself seeks to suppress public knowledge of that misconduct, particularly that of a named Social Worker. Well that question answers itself!

Consequently because the firm are prepared to argue the matter to the nth degree over wording which does not is not covered by the court order and are seeking to use the Order to suppress data obtained from other sources, such as the Social Workers to attempts to gain copies of Mrs X’s medical records without her permission, it is easier republish the original article on this page at the appropriate time.

A request was made in August 2020 for data from a subdivision of The Ministry of Justice. The response (issued outside the time limits for such in law) stated:

This is actually a two-headed matter. A complaint of poor service thrown in with a data access request for the data which proves the grounds of the complaint are correct and that multiple errors occurred. Needless to say the subdivision ignored the complaint and requested I make the data access request to London, as seen above.

You will see how this letter refers me to Data Access office as being the correct source of the data required. So Data Access were contacted in late September 2020 and the data again requested from them.

Some five months later and several chase-ups by email and Data Access deny they are the source of the data. The data is apparently best obtained from the office I originally wrote to.

There is little that can be said for this game of piggy-in-the-middle except to say that I will not play it.

The source of the apparent information that they cannot fulfil this data access request are unnamed “senior managers” whose details I have requested. Odd how it’s always some unnamed person as the source of an instruction that sends the public on a wild goose chase.

The disclosure team for MoJ are ultimately responsible for the production of data access requests made to sub departments within MoJ. The requests made in mid-2020 are indeed data access requests. They seek specific data and this is clear from the requests themselves. It is the job of Disclosure Team to work with the sub department of MoJ I first communicated with to obtain the data from them and then relay it to me.

It looks very much like both offices are attempting to evade the production of data via a game of piggy-in-the-middle and delay. Unsurprisingly the subsidiary office originally contacted has failed to respond to the initial complaint linked to this data request.

This request has been before Data Access office since September 2020 and has only just received the response of “go back to the start”. Taking this delay in response alone as a single issue would render the handling of the request wholly unacceptable and a breach of the relevant law.

By seeking to frustrate the request in this way The Ministry of Justice has earned itself a referral to The Information Commissioner’s Office.

Category: data access requests

How Ministry of Justice Evades Data Access Requests