Most recent arrest and S&S for the Commissioner, Deputy and Assistant Commissioners

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.021140

I note you seek access to the following information:

For each of the below senior Metropolitan Police officers, please share the following information:

1) The date of the most recent arrest they have made, the offence they arrested for and the disposal outcome of the arrest. If the exact date is unavailable, the month and year will suffice.

2) The date of the most recent stop and search conducted by them, the power they used to conduct the stop and search and the outcome of this search. If the exact date is unavailable, the month and year will suffice.

It should be possible to share this information without comprising the identity of any person arrested or searched. This information should be readily and easily available through a search of the relevant police indices.

The officers are:

Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick
Deputy Commissioner Sir Stephen House
Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball
Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave
Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes
Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu
Assistant Commissioner Louise Rolfe

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 – Personal Information

Reason for decision

Before I explain the reasons for the decisions I have made in relation to your request, I thought that it would be helpful if I outline the parameters set out by the Act within which a request for information can be answered. The Act creates a statutory right of access to information held by public authorities. A public authority in receipt of a request must, if permitted, confirm if the requested information is held by that public authority and, if so, then communicate that information to the applicant.

The right of access to information is not without exception and is subject to a number of exemptions which are designed to enable public authorities to withhold information that is not suitable for release. Importantly, the Act is designed to place information into the public domain, that is, once access to information is granted to one person under the Act, it is then considered public information and must be communicated to any individual should a request be received.

Details of an investigation could cause an individual to be identified and is therefore exempted in this case.

Section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 confirms that information which relates to an identified or identifiable living individual is Personal Data.

The Freedom of Information Act provides an exemption for Personal Data and this is known as the section 40 exemption.

Some of the information sought under your Freedom of Information request includes the following which we consider to be Personal Data
• Specific date of arrest that could, if disclosed, identify an individual.
• Specific date of the stop that could, if disclosed, reveal personal data.
• The outcome of each arrest and stop that could, if disclosed, reveal personal data.

Where the request is seeking access to third party personal data the section 40(2) exemption may be engaged.

In order to apply the Section 40(2) exemption the disclosure of the requested information must satisfy either the first, second or third conditions as defined by subsections 3A, 3B and 4A of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (as amended by Section 58 of the Data Protection Act 2018).

The first condition ensures that the exemption would apply in circumstances where the disclosure of the information would breach any of the Data Protection Act 2018 principles.

There are six Data Protection principles set out in the 2018 act and these can be found at section 34.
In this instance I have decided that the disclosure of the Personal Data would be incompatible with the first Data Protection principle which states that the processing (in this case the disclosure) of the data must be both lawful and fair.

When considering identifiability it should be assumed that the MPS are not looking just at the means reasonably likely to be used by the ordinary person in the street, but also the means that are likely to be used by a determined person with a particular reason to want to identify individuals.

Identified’ does not necessarily mean ‘named’. It can be enough to be able to establish a reliable connection between particular information and a known individual.’

Disclosure

The harm of disclosure is reduced by redacting the exact date of arrest and stop.

• Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick made an arrest for disqualified driving in 2021.

• AC Nick Ephgrave was a DCC and CCC with Surrey Police from 2013-2019. His service there included a number of arrests that are outside the scope of this FOI request.

Whilst serving with the MPS, AC Nick Ephgrave made a S.60 Stop in 2010.