Information Commissioner's Office

HM Revenue and Customs

3 July 2007, Central government

The Commissioner has determined that HMCE failed to comply with section 1(1)(a) of the Act as it did not explain to the complainant that it did not hold sales data broken down month by month as requested. In addition, HMCE failed to explain why the public interest favoured maintaining the exemptions cited in its Refusal Notice, in breach of section 17(3) of the Act. The Commissioner has concluded that a limited amount of information within the scope of the request was not exempt by virtue of section 44 of the Act. Therefore in failing to supply that limited material to the complainant HMCE breached section 1(1)(b) of the Act. However, the Commissioner has not ordered any steps in this regard as this information is publicly available in the Treasury Minutes on the First to Third Reports from the Committee of Public Accounts 2002-2003 mentioned in the body of this decision notice. The Commissioner also considers that the remainder of the material sought by the complaint is exempt by virtue of section 44 and therefore HMCE appropriately refused to provide that information to the complainant on the basis that it was not under an obligation to supply under section 1(1)(b).

FOI 1: Partly upheld