Law Officers' Department External Counsel Costs (FOI)

​​​​​Request

How much has been spent on external counsel costs by the Law Officers’ Department over the last twelve months?

Response

Information held by the Law Officers’ Department is exempt from disclosure as they are not a Scheduled Public Authority under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.  

Insufficient information is held centrally by Treasury and Exchequer in a format which would enable the question to be answered. Data would need to be extracted from various sources and manipulated to produce new information.  A Scheduled Public Authority is not required to manipulate and create new data sets in response to a Freedom of Information request, Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 therefore applies.   

Article applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.​

​Internal Review request

I write in relation to my Freedom of Information request made by me on 17 September 2024:

"How much has been spent on external counsel costs by the Law Officers' Department over

the last 12 months"

Pursuant to the reply received on 14 October 2024, I am not satisfied with the handling of my

request for information under the FOi Law, and I believe the reason which has been given to

deny the public access to the information is incorrect and evasive. Accordingly I request an

internal review.

Handling

This matter should not be handled by the Law Officers' Department or with any involvement

of the Law Officers' Department because the answer to this question will impact on them

directly. It should be handled as part of a process external to the Law Officers' Department.

Incorrect reason

Treasury & Exchequer suggest they do not hold the information as defines in Article 3. But,

they say that insufficient information is held centrally by them in a format which would enable

the question to be answered. If they hold information which can be extracted and

manipulated, they cannot rely on Article 3. Article 3 only applies in circumstances where the

information is not held by that public authority.

Treasury & Exchequer do not rely on Article 16{1) "A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the

cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by

Regulations."

Based on this there is no suggestion that any manipulation or preparation of the information

will take more than 12.5 hours.

If it the position of Treasury & Exchequer is that they are unaware of the level of expenditure

by the Law Officers' Department without first having to go to significant trouble to obtain this

information, I expect this will be of great concerns to the public.

Treasury & Exchequer should know how the extent to which this avenue of public money is

being spent. Treasury and Exchequer looks after the island's finances and assets, ensuring the protection and good use of public funds; they make sure that every Jersey pound of taxpayer's money is spent wisely, and all financial implications or decisions are understood. How can they exercise their function if the requested information is unavailable to them?

Internal Review response

The Internal Review Panel was asked to review the response provide and confirm the following:

Does the FOI request relate to a body to which the Law applies, or information held by a body covered by the Law? If the answer is no, all the other questions are not applicable. 

Further questions: 

iv. Was the right information searched for and reviewed? 

v. Was the information supplied appropriately 

vi. Was information appropriately withheld in accordance with the articles applied and were the public interest test/ prejudice test properly applied? 

Following discussion, it was agreed that it was possible to extract the data from information held within the Treasury Department by the removal of non-relevant data. 

On this basis it was concluded that the applicant of Article 3 was not valid in this instance and therefore the original response should be overturned, and the information should be provided to the applicant. 

The total spend on external counsel engaged by The Law Offices Department for the period October 2023 through to September 2024 was £1,612,507.