Glasgow, FOI and the WPBR

Here is one of the outstanding freedom of information (FOI) requests I an pursuing with Glasgow City Council (GCC).

The Council failed to respond to my request within the 20 day time limit laid down in the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, and I have now referred the matter to the Scottish Information Commissioner who has the power to 'order' the City Council to comply.

My request focuses on just one document in one drawer of 3 GCC filing cabinets containing information about  the Council's 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme. As regular readers know this was introduced in 2006/07. 

The Council is refusing to release this information on the grounds that this would cost more than £600 to provide me with an answer - the correspondence below explains the background.

In 2016 the Council's chief executive used her discretion to boost the pension pot of another senior colleague by £120,079 which allowed the Director of Finance to retire early at age 57 and without taking any reduction in her pension benefits. 

To my mind the Council workforce, the Council tax payer and the wider public are entitled to know how Scotland's largest council got itself into such a mess over its Workforce Pay and Benefits Review (WPBR), particularly as this is going to cost hundreds of millions of pounds to put right.

So is it right for senior officials to keep this information secret when the Council's declared policy is to become a 'world leader' for its openness and transparency? 

I think not and as well as posting these details on my blog, I also plan to write directly to the Council's political leaders: Susan Aitken (SNP), Frank McAveety (Scottish Labour), David Meikle (Scottish Conservatives), Martha Wardrop and Allan Young (Green Party Co-Chairs). 

 

17 October 2018

Daren Fitzhenry 

Scottish Information Commissioner

Kinburn Castle

Doubledykes Road

St Andrews
Fife

KY16 9DS

By email to: enquiries@itspublicknowledge.info

Dear Mr Fitzhenry

Glasgow City Council (GCC) – FOISA Appeal

I would like to apply for an adjudication by the Scottish Information Commissioner over a FOISA Request submitted to Glasgow City Council on 16 April 2018.

The grounds of my application are that I submitted a formal FOISA Review Request to Glasgow City Council on 11 September 2018, but the Council has failed to respond within the 20 day time limit laid down by FOISA 2002.

I would, therefore, ask the Commissioner to order the release of the information requested in the FOI Request letter to Glasgow City Council dated 10 August 2018
I look forward to hearing from you in due course and if you require any further details or clarification at this stage, please contact me by e-mail at: markirvine@compuserve.com

Kind regards

Mark Irvine

Enclosures x 3

Carole Forrest

Director of Governance and Solicitor to the Council

Glasgow City Council

By email to: FOIReviews@glasgow.gov.uk

Dear Ms Forrest

FoI Review Request

I refer to the letter from Glasgow City Council dated 7 September 2018 (Enclosure 3) and would like to submit a formal FOI Review Request for the following reasons.

1) In its answer to a previous FOI Request the Council claimed that it would take 66.5 hours and cost approximately £677.34 to provide relevant information on the WPBR based on an internal sampling exercise. The Council's letter of 14 May 2018 (Enclosure 2) refers along with my response dated 5 June 2018 (Enclosure 1). In this case I am only asking for a tiny fraction of the total WPBR information held by the Council which is discrete, easy to locate and is not spread across multiple office locations. I might add that taking photos of the pages rather than photocopying them would speed the process up considerably.  

2) Therefore, I have to disagree with the Council's assertion that it would cost more than £600 to provide this information because the handwritten notes amount to one single document, from one single drawer of the nine individual filing cabinets, even allowing a generous amount of time for personal and/or sensitive details to be redacted. I hope that, on reflection, you will agree that the Council's claim in relation to Section 12 (1) of FOISA does not stand up to serious scrutiny. 

3) I also have to say that I find it very strange that, in this day and age, the Council appears to be relying on handwritten notes as a means of recording and securing vital information, but leaving that aside for the moment I would be grateful if the Council could confirm the following points in its FOI Review Response:

a) How many pages of handwritten notes are there in total?

b) In whose name or names are these vital documents recorded?

c) Is there is more than one single volume of notes and if so, how many?

d) Do the notes cover specific periods and if so, please confirm the dates involved?

4) In my view there is a compelling public interest in accessing this information, including the legal advice given to the Council at the time, because my FOI Request goes to the heart of whether or not senior Council senior officials acted in 'good faith' over the introduction of the WPBR in 2007. Senior officials insist they acted in good faith, but how does this claim square with the introduction of a 37 hour WPBR 'rule' which was designed to disadvantage low paid, female dominated jobs? The WPBR handwritten notes almost certainly contain the answer to this question. 

5) As such, the handwritten notes are concerned with the conduct and good governance of Scotland's largest council and they are crucial to a proper understanding of the role played by senior council officials in 2005/07 during the introduction of the WPBR pay scheme - a scheme which has since been judged as 'unfit for purpose' by the highest civil court in Scotland, the Court of Session. For this reason alone, I would expect the Council's political leaders as well as its senior officials to support a policy of full and open disclosure.

7) So the issues surrounding the introduction of the WPBR in 2005/07 are of enormous public interest in 2018 given the long-running equal pay dispute in Glasgow City Council which has been raging for the past 12 years.

8) I find it hard to believe that the handwritten notes contain 'formal legal advice' because I have never heard of a Scottish local authority, or indeed any public body, receiving formal legal advice in the shape of handwritten notes. If the advice is from an official who just happens, or happened, to be a solicitor at the time (e.g Annemarie O'Donnell, Carol Forrest or Ian Drummond) I would argue this is not 'confidential' in a proper legal sense, but again I would ask the Council to clarify the nature of this 'legal advice' in its FOI Review Response.  

9) I would also emphasises that I am open to suggestion about restricting the period of my initial request, if that would help get to the bottom of what is contained in the handwritten notes. For example, if the Council agreed to provide information covering the period October 2005 to December 2005, this would help to determine the significance (or otherwise) of the information involved and whether there would be merit in requesting similar information covering the original (and longer) period from October 2005 to November 2006. 

10) Finally, can I say that council officials should be doing all in their power to live up to the Council Leader's publicly stated aim of Glasgow City Council becoming a 'world leader' for openness and transparency. To my mind, this means being honest enough to put all the relevant information into the public domain, even if this could prove inconvenient or embarrassing to senior council officials, past or present.

I look forward to your review response and would be grateful if you could reply to me by email at: markirvine@compuserve.com

Kind regards

Mark Irvine

ENCLOSURE 2 - FOI RESPONSE LETTER FROM GLASGOW CITY COUNCIL DATED 7 SEPTEMBER 2018

Freedom of Information Team 

Chief Executive’s Department

Our Ref: FOI 6694660

Your Ref:

7 September 2018

By email: markirvine@compuserve.com 

Dear Mr Irvine

Request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (“the Act”)

Thank you for your email received on 10 August 2018 requesting that the following information be provided to you:

 “1) Please provide me with a copy of the handwritten notes regarding the planning/implementation of WPBR from October 2005 to November 2006.”

The Council is treating your request as a request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

We can advise you that the Council holds substantial handwritten notes which fall within the scope of your request. These are contained within bound volumes which would result in additional photocopying time as the notes cannot be fed through the feeder for the scanner and each page will need to be scanned individually. 

The vast majority of the pages will require some redaction for personal data, for example staff names, or legal advice given by the Council’s solicitors. This would be a very time consuming process. We are therefore of the view that it would exceed the cost threshold allowed by section 12(1) of the Act and the fees regulations made under the Act (this limit is currently £600). 

The Council has the option of complying with requests where the costs exceed £600.  However, on this occasion we have decided not to due to the resources (both financial and human) which voluntary compliance with this request would divert away from our core business.

We have provided below a further explanation of why the information that you have requested would require to be redacted: 

Personal data 

We believe that some of the information that you have requested is exempt from release under section 38(1)(b) of the 2002 Act. This means that disclosure of the information would involve releasing personal information about individuals. Release of this information would breach the Data Protection Principles contained within Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation. These require us to process personal information in a lawful, fair and transparent manner. 

The individuals concerned would not expect their personal details to be released in response to an FOI request. In our opinion, it would be unfair to the individuals concerned for such information to be released into the public domain. 

Legal Advice 

Some of the information is exempt from release under FOI because of the exemption contained in section 36(1) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.  In other words, the material in question consists of information in respect of which the Council could maintain a claim to confidentiality of communications in legal proceedings.

While I have concluded that the exemption contained in section 36(1) applies in this case, the Council would still be obliged to release the information in response to your request unless the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.  In this case, we take the view that only a compelling public interest would be sufficient to justify departure from the principle that communications between a lawyer and their client should remain confidential.  No reasons have been advanced which would justify disclosure in this case, and accordingly we are unable to comply with your request.

If you are dissatisfied with the way Glasgow City Council has dealt with your request you are entitled to request the Council to review its response.  Please note that for a review to take place you must:

• Lodge a written requirement for a review within 40 working days of the date of this letter
• Include a correspondence address and a description of the original request and the reason why you are dissatisfied
• Address your request to the Director of Governance and Solicitor to the Council:

Director of Governance and Solicitor to the Council

Glasgow City Council

City Chambers

George Square

Glasgow G2 1DU

Email:  FOIReviews@glasgow.gov.uk 

You will receive notice of the results of the review within 20 working days of receipt of your request.  The notice will state the decision reached by the reviewing officer as well as details of how to appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner if you are still dissatisfied with the Council’s response.  You must request an internal review by the Council before a complaint can be directed to the Scottish Information Commissioner.  For your information at this stage, an appeal can be made to the Scottish Information Commissioner by contacting her office as follows if you do remain dissatisfied with the outcome of the Council’s review decision -  

Address:  Kinburn Castle, Doubledykes Road, St Andrews, KY16 9DS. 

Email:  enquiries@itspublicknowledge.info 

Telephone:  01334 464610

You can also use the Scottish Information Commissioner’s online appeal service to make an application for a decision: www.itspublicknowledge.info/appeal 

Please note that you cannot make an appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner until you have first requested an internal review by the Council.

If you wish to submit a complaint to the Council in relation to the manner in which it has handled your request for information then you can do by requesting that the Council review its response.  Details of how to request a review are set out in the above paragraph “Right of Review”.

Yours sincerely

Information and Data Protection Team

Chief Executive’s Department

ENCLOSURE 1 - ORIGINAL FOISA REQUEST TO GLASGOW CITY COUNCIL DATED 10 AUGUST 2018

-----Original Message-----

From: Mark Irvine
To: annemarie.odonnell ; foi
Sent: Fri, Aug 10, 2018 4:04 pm
Subject: FOISA Request

10 August 2018

Annemarie O'Donnell

Chief Executive

Glasgow City Council

By email to - annemarie.odonnell@ced.glasgow.gov.uk

Dear Ms O'Donnell

FOISA Request

I refer to the attached letter from Glasgow City Council dated 08 August 2018 and would like to make the following request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

1) Please provide me with a copy of the handwritten notes regarding the planning/implementation of WPBR from October 2005 to November 2006?

I look forward to your replay and would be grateful if you could respond to me by e-mail at: markirvine@compuserve.com

Kind regards

Mark Irvine 

OurRef: FOI6666761 Your Ref:

8 August 2018
By email: markirvine@compuserve.com

Dear Mr Irvine

Request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002

I refer to your request received on 11 July 2018 requesting that the following information be provided to you:

“I understand that Glasgow City Council is in possession of three filing cabinets containing information on its now discredited WPBR pay scheme which, as you know, has been judged as 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court.

I am not clear on how these three filing cabinets are distinguished, one from the other, but I would like to make the following request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

1) Please provide me with a description of all of the WPBR information which is held in the 'top drawer' of filing cabinet Number 1?

2) if the top drawer of filing cabinet Number 1 has a 'name', reference number or some other identifying feature, please confirm this information as well?

Glasgow City Council (“the Council”) is treating your request as a request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (“the Act”). Refer to our response below.

1) List of the contents of the first drawer 'top drawer' of filing cabinet Number 1.

Handwritten notes of planning/implementation of WPBR from October 2005 to November 2006
WPBR Guidance for managers
PRE WPBR Manual Worker Job Description
WPBR Trade Union Meeting Notes and Agenda 2005 to 2007

Allocation Queries from Services
Allocation Issued Responses

Allocation Procedures

Allocation guidance
Draft Allocations Compensation/Settlement Payments
Equality Impact Assessment Screening

Information and Data Protection Team

Chief Executive’s Department Glasgow City Council
City Chambers
George Square

Glasgow G2 1DU

Three Filing Cabinets Outside Annemarie's Office, Glasgow (28/10/18)

The connection between Glasgow City Council and 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' comes down to the contents of three mysterious filing cabinets located somewhere in or around Glasgow City Chambers.

The important thing is that these three filing cabinets contain all of the archived information about the Council's 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme which was introduced back in 2006/07.

I've been asking the Council for months (via a number of FOI Requests) to explain what is actually in the filing cabinets and to share information which I believe should be in the public domain such as:

• What were the Terms of Reference for the WPBR?
• How was the WPBR commissioned and was the brief put out to commercial tender?
• Why did the Council not use the Scottish Joint Council scheme recommended by COSLA and the Trade Unions?
• What was the total cost of the WPBR?
• Who 'signed off' on the key provisions of the WPBR? 

So far, Glasgow has refused my FOI requests even though this information would show whether senior officials council officials acted in 'good faith', as the chief executive claims.

Or whether they went along with the blatantly discriminatory provisions of the WPBR including its notorious 37 hour rule which, I say, was designed to disadvantage the Council's female dominated jobs.

Tune in again tomorrow for more startling revelations.  

 
  

Glasgow and 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' (25/10/18)

Everyone knows that the filmmakers of the 'Fast and Furious' franchise are in town, but who can guess the connection between Glasgow City Council and 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' - a sometimes harrowing and hard to watch, but otherwise excellent, movie starring Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell? 

   



 

Trump's 'Saudi First' Policy

The Washington Post sets the record straight over the appalling murder of Jamal Khashoggi and Donald Trump's decision to put his business interests and family interest first when it comes to Saudi Arabia.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/11/20/khashoggis-murder-will-stain-trump-and-america-forever/?utm_term=.c4836c20e0f9

Khashoggi’s murder will stain Trump (and America) forever

Columnist David Ignatius, Jamal Khashoggi's longtime friend, and Karen Attiah, Khashoggi's editor, talk about the missing Post contributor and his work. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

By Karen Attiah - Washington Post

Last Friday afternoon I went to the Belgian restaurant Brasserie Beck, a few blocks down the street from The Post. It was the place I had my last lunch with my friend and Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. I couldn’t hold back the tears.

That evening, The Post reported that the CIA had concluded with “high confidence” that Jamal’s Oct. 2 murder by Saudi agents in the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.

There has been mounting evidence of the crown prince’s culpability. U.S. intelligence officials have said MBS, as the crown prince is called, plotted to lure Khashoggi from his home in Virginia back to Saudi Arabia to detain him. Close advisers to the crown prince, including the notorious Saud al-Qahtani, have been directly implicated in the murder. Analysts and officials from around the world have said that such an extensive operation could not have happened without the crown prince’s knowledge. A State Department official said it is “blindingly obvious” that MBS ordered Khashoggi’s killing. Despite all of this, President Trump has repeated that MBS has denied the killing. Over the weekend, he called the CIA report “premature.” Trump refuses to personally listen to the audio tape of Khashoggi’s killing, but admits that the tape is vicious.


In a juvenile, clumsy White House statement on Tuesday full of falsehoods, Trump repeated the Saudi lie that Jamal was an “enemy of a state” and that the “United States would stand steadfastly by Saudi Arabia,” even though its regime lured, killed and dismembered a peaceful Post op-ed writer who lived in Virginia.

In effect, Trump is doing his best to help the Saudi regime get away with the murder of a U.S. resident and one of the Arab world’s most prominent writers. If the administration continues down this path, it will further destroy whatever is left of America’s moral credibility on global human rights and freedom of expression. It puts truth-seekers and journalists who dare challenge the Saudi regime and other intolerant governments in grave danger, no matter where they live. Trump’s refusal to act gives a symbolic green light to the young, power-drunk Mohammed bin Salman so he can continue his reckless exploits in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world, for possibly the next 40 to 50 years, and face zero consequences.

“If we allow a murderer to get away because we think we can make some deals with him, we are just reinforcing the idea that money can silence everybody”, says Abdullah Alaoudh, a senior scholar at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. “And this is the dangerous message that created Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi. We can better protect the good relationship with Saudi Arabia in the long run through building a relationship with the Saudi people, institutions and even the majority of the royal family. Or we can risk losing all that by protecting one powerful individual who has been implicated in a horrible crime.”

The Saudi regime has scrambled to spin Jamal’s killing, changing its story multiple times. The Saudi regime has undermined itself, proving to the world that it would rather hide behind lies, rather than correct its mistakes and choose a more tolerant, peaceful path. Pro-Saudi-regime voices, including the president’s son Eric Trump, have argued that the death of one journalist should not destroy the U.S.-Saudi relationship. But voices are failing to frame the issue properly.

As an oil exporter, U.S.-Saudi relationship will continue; rather it is the United States’ open praise and support for the crown prince that must come to an end. Jamal’s death, while heinous and personally painful for his colleagues, family and friends, is just the latest alarming symptom of MBS’s political recklessness. In the past two years, under the crown prince’s rapid ascent to power, scores of peaceful reformers and human rights campaigners (including elderly women) have been jailed. Many have been tortured; Amnesty International reported that imprisoned female activists have faced sexual harassment. The kingdom tried to blockade Qatar. It kidnapped Lebanon’s prime minister and broke off diplomatic relations with Canada over tweets.

The darkly ironic argument that the United States should allow MBS to get away with murder just so it can continue to sell military equipment to Saudi Arabia is as morally craven as it is foolish policy. The Saudi-led coalition along with the United Arab Emirates has orchestrated a disastrous war in Yemen, triggering the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. Militarily, the war has been a failure. Despite U.S. training of Saudi forces and their use of American weapons, the Saudi forces have not made any significant headway against Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The most newsworthy target that the Saudis managed to hit in recent months with U.S. weaponry wasn’t a Houthi stronghold: It was a school bus full of Yemeni children.

There are those who argue that MBS should stay in the interests of “stability.” But we have seen this movie before. From Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo to Augusto Pinochet in Chile, dictators supported by elites in Western capitals have terrorized their citizens and destabilized their regions. The peoples of these countries are told by these same governments to grin and bear their own repression, because the alternative is supposedly worse. In the case of Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi dared to declare in his work that Saudi Arabia’s citizens deserved better than Mohammed bin Salman’s repression. He was killed for it, because he was right.

From Trump’s failure to condemn white supremacist violence in Charlotesville to mocking a sexual assault victim, there have been many low points of this presidency. But turning a blind eye to the butchering of a U.S.-based journalist just may be one of the lowest. It is time for Congress to act and impose consequences for Saudi Arabia’s dangerous behavior, from Yemen to its bloody repression of peaceful critics. For if we do not, Khashoggi’s death will be a blood stain on America’s moral conscience that neither time, nor Saudi hush money, will ever erase.