Information Commissioner's Office

Department of Health

14 April 2008, Central government

The complainant made a number of requests to the Department of Health (the “DoH”) in connection with NHS Connecting for Health and the PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System) procurement programme. These requests were made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the “Act”). Whilst most of the information was disclosed the DoH withheld the PACS Additional Services Catalogue for the Southern Cluster (the “Catalogue”) under sections 41 and 43. During the course of the investigation the DoH informed the Commissioner that it was now relying solely upon section 43. After considering the DoH’s arguments the Commissioner is not persuaded that the disclosure of the Catalogue would prejudice the commercial interests of either the DoH or the IT provider. Therefore the Commissioner has decided that section 43 is not engaged. Therefore the Commissioner found that the DoH had acted in breach of section 1 in that it had wrongly relied upon section 43 to withhold this information. The Commissioner also decided that the DoH had acted in breach of section 17 as it took longer than 20 working days to issue a refusal notice. The Commissioner requires the Catalogue to be disclosed.

FOI 43: Upheld