Misuse of Official Statistics
Request
The organisations and individuals that the Gambling Commission identified for misuse of Official Statistics in its letter to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (dated 29th August 2023)?
Those organisations and individuals are as follows:
- The Betting & Gaming Council
- Gambling With Lives
- Dr Matthew Gaskell, NHS
- Mr Paul Blomfield, MP
- Dame Caroline Dinenage, MP
- Mr Clive Efford, MP
- Dr Rupa Huq, MP
- Mr John Nicholson, MP
This information is requested for the months of August and September 2023.
Response
Thank you for your request which has been processed under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
In your email you have requested the organisations and individuals that the Gambling Commission identified for misuse of Official Statistics in its letter to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (dated 29th August 2023).
Section 21 of the FOIA provides that information is exempt where it is reasonably accessible elsewhere. The letter referred to in your request is publicly available here:
Misuse of Official Statistics(opens in a new tab)
Review of the decision
If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your Freedom of Information request you are entitled to an internal review of our decision. You should write to FOI Team, Gambling Commission, 4th floor, Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, B2 4BP or by reply to this email.
Please note, internal review requests should be made within 40 working days of the initial response. Requests made outside this timeframe will not be processed.
If you are not content with the outcome of our review, you may then apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have already exhausted the review procedure provided by the Gambling Commission.
The ICO can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office (opens in a new tab), Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Information Management Team
Gambling Commission
Victoria Square House
Victoria Square
Birmingham B2 4BP
Internal Review Request
I wish to request a review of this decision.
In my original email (dated 16th September) I very clearly asked for copies of correspondence between the Gambling Commission and those people and organisations identified in the letter sent by Andrew Rhodes to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I did not simply ask for the identities of those mentioned in the letter. Your response is therefore inappropriate and I request a review.
Internal Review Response
I am writing to you further to your Freedom of Information request dated 16/09/2023 which we responded to on 16/10/2023, and your subsequent request for an internal review received on 16/10/2023.
We have now concluded our review and our findings are detailed below. This internal review was conducted by someone who was not involved in the processing of your original request.
In your initial email you requested the following information:
Please can you disclose all correspondence between the Gambling Commission and the organisations and individuals that the Gambling Commission identified for misuse of Official Statistics in its letter to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (dated 29th August 2023)?
Those organisations and individuals are as follows:
- The Betting & Gaming Council
- Gambling With Lives
- Dr Matthew Gaskell, NHS
- Mr Paul Blomfield, MP
- Dame Caroline Dinenage, MP
- Mr Clive Efford, MP
- Dr Rupa Huq, MP
- Mr John Nicholson, MP
This information is requested for the months of August and September 2023.
In our initial response we advised that Section 21 of the FOIA provides that information is exempt where it is reasonably accessible elsewhere. The letter referred to in your request was publicly available here:
Misuse of Official Statistics (opens in a new tab)
Internal review
Following a review of you request and our response, I have established that due to an administrative error your request was not processed in its entirety. As a result, the response you received did not fully cover the information held by the Commission falling within the scope of your request. The request has now been fully processed in line with the FOIA. Please accept our apologies for this oversight.
Please find attached the information held by the Commission which falls within the scope of your request.
It should be noted that personal information relating to identifiable individuals has been redacted from the attached documents.
The Data Protection Act 2018 requires the processing of personal data to be fair and lawful. The Commission considers that it would be disproportionate for us to publicly disclose the personal data contained within these documents as there is no strong public interest in doing so. There is no legitimate expectation that the personal information of these individuals will be disclosed in the context in which it is held.
On balance, there is no legitimate public interest in disclosing this information and it would not be fair to do so. This information is therefore exempt under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Finally, any information contained within the attached documents which does not fall within the scope of your request has also been removed.
If you are not content with the outcome of your review, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the complaints procedure provided by the Gambling Commission. The ICO can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Yours sincerely,
Information Management Team
Gambling Commission
Files
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