Payments given to Hope Not Hate

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.023135

I note you seek access to the following information:

Please can you inform me what information if any, does your office hold in relation to any

1) Payments given to Hope Not Hate, Nick Lowle and its employees and or its sister organisation, Searchlight, run by Gerry Gable.

2) If any, what these payments were for.

Decision

I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information. Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 40(5) - Personal Information

Reason for decision

I would like to inform you that I will supply a partial disclosure of the requested information. The Metropolitan Police Service will disclose whether payments were made to Hope Not Hate and Searchlight. However, the Metropolitan Police Service can neither confirm nor deny whether it holds the information that you requested in relation to Payments given to Nick Lowle and Hope Not Hate employees, as the duty in Section 1(1)(a) of the Act does not apply.

In relation to payments given to Nick Lowle and Hope Not Hate employees and if any, what these payments were for.

Section 40(5) - Personal Information - To confirm or deny whether any information is held in relation to your request could publicly reveal information about an individual or individuals. This would breach the right to privacy afforded to persons under the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). There are six data protection principles set out in section 34 of the DPA 2018 and under Article 5(1)(a) of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The first principle requires personal data to be processed in a ‘lawful and fair’ manner. The basis for determining what constitutes lawful and fair is outlined under section 35 of the DPA. Under section 35(2) it states:

• the data subject has given consent to the processing for that purpose, or
• the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out for that purpose by a competent authority.

Under Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR, the disclosure of personal data is considered to be lawful if:

• There is a legitimate interest in the disclosure of that personal data.
• The disclosure of the personal data is necessary to meet that legitimate interest.
• The disclosure would not cause unwarranted harm to the data subject.

Question 1 of this request asks the MPS to confirm or deny whether it holds information in relation to payments given to Nick Lowle and Hope Not Hate employees and question 2 asks if any, what these payments were for.

• Confirming or denying whether the requested information is held would provide a factual answer to this request. As this request for information relates to the spending of public money, the legitimate interest in transparency would be further satisfied through the release of this information.

• Confirming or denying whether the information requested in question 1 and 2 is held would disclose whether the MPS has made payments to Nick Lowle and/or Hope Not Hate employees personally as opposed to Hope Not Hate the organisation. This being the case, confirming or denying whether any information is held would disclose whether an individual or individuals have received payments from the MPS personally, irrespective of whether any information is held. This could pose a legitimate risk to an individual. There is an expectation that organisations that work with the MPS and receive payments related to the spending of public money can be named but members of staff from these organisations have a legitimate right to privacy and would not expect the MPS to publicly release and publish their personal data under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I therefore find it justified to neither confirm nor deny that information is held in relation to payments made to Nick Lowle and specific Hope Not Hate employees.

Disclosure

Q1 - Payments given to Hope Not Hate, Nick Lowle and its employees and or its sister organisation, Searchlight, run by Gerry Gable.

Answer - No payments have been made to Hope Not Hate or Searchlight.

Q2 - If any, what these payments were for.

Answer - Not applicable given the answer above.