Meetings attended/not attended by Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.033863

I note you seek access to the following information:

Q1) Between 08 October 2023 and 08 November 2023, please can you tell me all the meetings Sir Mark Rowley, as Met commissioner, attended in a professional capacity?

For each occasion, can you please tell me the name of the person Rowley met, the date of the meeting (in format DD/MM/YYYY), the name of the organisation or individual being met with, the format over which the meeting was held (i.e. zoom, hotel, restaurant, cafe, Microsoft teams etc) and a brief description of the purpose of the meeting. Please send me details of all the meetings Rowley was invited to but didn't attend, telling me the reason for his non-attendance.

By "meeting", I am referring to scheduled roundtables/discussions/meetings/conferences etc... For example, these could be meetings with police union representatives, MPs, chief constables from other forces etc...

Q2) Please send me Rowley's official work diary notes/entries - presumably taken by an assistant in his office - for the time period between 08 October 2023 and 08 November 2023. Of course, any personal/security information can be redacted, but could you please not reject this part of the request outright, as I am sure disclosure of some of the information is permissible under the terms of the act.”

I note that you withdrew the second part of the request on 29 April 2024 and therefore the following response relates only to question one.

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(2) and 40(3A) – Personal Information

Reason for decision

A Freedom of Information Act request is not a private transaction. Both the request itself, and any information disclosed, are considered suitable for open publication. This is because, under Freedom of Information, any information disclosed is released into the wider public domain, effectively to the world and not just to one individual.
Where an individual is requesting his or her own personal data, the information is always exempt.

Where an individual is requesting third party personal data, such as in this case, the MPS must ensure that any action taken adheres to the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR. To clarify, the Freedom of Information Act only allows disclosure of personal data if that disclosure would be compliant with the principles for processing personal data. These principles are outlined under section 34 of the DPA 2018 and under Article 5 of the UK GDPR.

The MPS recognises that there may be a legitimate public interest in disclosing the information requested in full. A legitimate interest is inherent in the disclosure of information upon request under the Freedom of Information Act given the associated benefit of enhancing the transparency and accountability of public. However, under the Act we must consider whether it is lawful to do so.

In this case, section 40(2) and 40(3A) (Personal Data) of the Act applies to some of the information contained within the spreadsheet, as disclosure of the information redacted would be in breach of the first principle. It is therefore necessary to maintain the exemption in this case. The disclosure of this information under the Act would not be necessary or proportionate in the circumstances, and therefore there is no legal gateway under the Act in which to release it.

Section 3 of the Data Protection Act (DPA) 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.

The information sought under your Freedom of Information request includes the following which we consider to be Personal Data:

• Lower ranking officer and staff names
• Non-public facing officials’ names
• Names of external partners
• Details of personal meetings attended by the Commissioner 

Where the request is seeking access to third party personal data, such as in this case, 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 3(A), 3(B) and 4(A) of the Act.

The first condition ensures that the exemption would apply in circumstances where the disclosure of the information would breach any of the data protection principles.

There are six Data Protection principles specified within Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In this instance it has been decided that the disclosure of the Personal Data included in this information would be incompatible with principle (a) of the GDPR which requires that personal data shall be:

‘processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency’);

In accordance with the legislation, the disclosure of personal data is considered to be lawful if:

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

Here, we need to balance the rights and freedoms of the individuals involved with any legitimate public interest in disclosure.

A legitimate interest is inherent in the disclosure of information upon request under the Freedom of Information Act given the associated benefit of enhancing the transparency and accountability of public authorities.

There may also be a legitimate public interest to the extent that the accountability and transparency of the Commissioner himself would be enhanced by the release of this information. It would provide evidence of who the Commissioner met during this time and why, demonstrating his lack of bias and professionalism, and showing his commitment to serving all.

It would also provide an account of how he spends his time and with whom, which would help inform and improve the quality of public debate about his role in policing. This may, in turn, also enhance public confidence.

The MPS appreciates the public interest in disclosing information about how and with whom the Commissioner spends his working days, and disclosing the information would demonstrate accountability and transparency whilst also enabling the public to engage in public debate about this. However, it is not only the Commissioner whose personal information is contained within these diary entries. Therefore we must ascertain whether the disclosure of this other personal information is necessary in order to meet that legitimate interest.

Disclosing the personal information (including names, details about interview status, the companies and organisations these individuals work for and represent) of these lower ranking officers and staff, third party external contacts, and non-public facing officials would not be proportionate in the circumstances. It can be argued that the legitimate interest in this request is satisfied by the disclosure today – which addresses the points raised by revealing the meetings had by the Commissioner, and the vast majority of those he met with. In addition, some personal information has been disclosed in response to this request (in the form of the names and roles of higher ranking officials and public servants) as their expectation of privacy (given their rank / roles) is much lower.

Finally, it is for the MPS to consider whether disclosure of the redacted information would cause unwarranted harm to those data subjects. As explained, the individuals’ names that have been redacted are generally speaking not public facing and are of lower rank and / or not MPS employees. They therefore would have a greater expectation of privacy and would arguably not expect to be named in such a disclosure. Doing so may open them up to further enquiries or contact, which would constitute an unwarranted intrusion into the lives of these data subjects. As a consequence, the disclosure of the redacted personal data would be likely to have an unnecessary and unjustified impact on those data subjects.

Furthermore, MPS privacy notices indicate that personal data is collected and used for policing purposes such as the prevention and detection of crime and will not be further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes. This is in accordance with section 36 of the DPA 2018.

With this in mind, the data subjects redacted from this information would have had a legitimate expectation at the time of these meetings that their personal data would not be used for non-policing purposes such as this. Disclosure in the circumstances of your request would therefore be unlawful and would contravene both the first data protection principle and principle (a) of the GDPR.

Disclosure

Please find below a document detailing all official meetings attended by the Commissioner between the dates in question, including the date of the meeting, the individual or Organisation that was met with, and the format of these meetings (in person, via phone call, or on Teams). The title of the meeting itself is intended to provide you with the ‘brief description of the purpose of the meeting’.

Please note, appointments that did not fall within your definition of meeting have not been included – for example, scheduled interviews, question and answer sessions with staff, visits to buildings or sites, and other public events or engagements (such as conferences or Commendation ceremonies).

You will notice that on a small number of entries within the document the attendees have been recorded as not being held by the MPS. This is because although we hold the list of those invited, we hold no record of who actually attended these meetings. This is particularly the case with meetings organised by others / different organisations.

In relation to the meetings that the Commissioner was invited to but did not attend during this period, I can provide you with the following details:

16/10/2023 – London Crime Reduction Board. The Deputy Commissioner attended on the Commissioner’s behalf.

17/10/2023 – London Partnership Board. The AC for Met Ops, Matt Twist, attended on the Commissioner’s behalf.

18/10/2023 - A Staff Association AGM. The Commissioner was unable to attend due to existing commitments.

19/10/2023 - Leading through Change: Democracy and Governance. The Commissioner was unable to attend due to existing commitments.

20/10/2023 - Met Police Commissioner’s Fund Trustees meeting. The Commissioner was not required to attend, and other trustees attended on his behalf.

23/10/2023 - External Round table. Another MPS representative attended on the Commissioner’s behalf.

24/10/2023 - Senior Leaders Call. This invite was declined as his attendance was not required.

25/10/2023 – Meeting with DC (Section 40). An Assistant Commissioner attended on the Commissioner’s behalf.

30/10/2023 - COBR[M]. This was attended by another management board member on the Commissioner’s behalf.

03/11/2023 - Public Service Ethics Network. Another MPS representative attended on the Commissioner’s behalf.

03/11/2023 - Academic research into the disproportionate use of Taser. Another MPS representative attended on the Commissioner’s behalf.

06/11/2023 – Finland Police visit. Another MPS representative attended on the Commissioner’s behalf.

07/11/2023 - Senior Leaders Call. This invite was declined as his attendance was not required.

08/11/2023 - MB Risk Workshop. The Commissioner was unable to attend due to operational commitments.

08/11/2023 - COBR(M): Pre-brief. The Commissioner was unable to attend due to operational commitments.

08/11/2023 - Meeting with BCU Commanders. The Commissioner was unable to attend due to operational commitments.