Maurizi v The Information Commissioner and The Crown Prosecution Service (Interested Party: Foreign and Commonwealth Office): [2019] UKUT 262 (AAC)
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Judge Mitchell |
| Neutral Citation | [2019] UKUT 262 (AAC) |
| Court | Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber) |
| Subject Matter | Information rights,Special educational needs,Information rights - Freedom of information - qualified exemptions,Special educational needs - other,Mitchell,E |
| Date | 03 September 2019 |
| Published date | 27 September 2019 |
Maurizi v The Information Commissioner & The Crown Prosecution Service (Interested P arty: Foreign &
Commonwealth Office) [2019] UKUT 262 (AAC)
1
IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL Case No. GIA/973/2018
ADMINISTRATIVE APPEALS CHAMBER
Before: Upper Tribunal Judge Mitchell
Hearing: 1 July 2019, Field House, Bream’s Buildings, London
Decision: 23 August 2019
Attendances:
Appellant (Ms S Maurizi):
• Mr P Coppel QC, Ms E Dehon and Ms J Robinson of counsel.
1st Respondent (Information Commissioner):
• Mr R Hopkins of counsel (instructed by the Commissioner’s Legal Services
Department)
2nd Respondent (Crown Prosecution Services):
• Mr R Dunlop Q.C. of counsel (instructed by the Government Legal Department)
Interested Party (Foreign & Commonwealth Office):
• Mr R O’Brien of counsel (instructed by the Government Legal Department)
Decision: The decision of the First-tier Tribunal, given on 11 December 2017 (tribunal reference:
EA/2017/0041), did not involve the making of an error on a point of law. Under section 11 of the
Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, the Upper Tribunal DISMISSES this appeal.
Maurizi v The Information Commissioner & The Crown Prosecution Service (Interested P arty: Foreign &
Commonwealth Office) [2019] UKUT 262 (AAC)
GIA/973/2018
2
REASONS FOR DECISION
Introductory matters
1. I record my thanks to counsel for their assistance at the hearing of this appeal. The case was well-
argued by counsel who are more than proficient in the law relating to information rights.
2. In these reasons:
- “1961 Convention” means the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, done at Vienna
on 18 April 1961;
- “APPGER” means the decision of a three-judge panel of the Upper Tribunal in All Party
Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition v The Information Commissioner and the
Foreign & Commonwealth Office [2015] UKUT 377 (AAC);
- “CPS” means the Crown Prosecution Service;
- “Evans” means the decision of the Supreme Court in R (Evans) v AG [2015] UKSC 21;
- “FCO” means the Foreign & Commonwealth Office;
- “FOIA” means the Freedom of Information Act 2000;
- “FtT” means the First-tier Tribunal;
- “NCND” refers to those provisions of FOIA that provide for a public authority to respond to
a request for information by neither confirming nor denying that the information is held;
- “SPA” means the Swedish Prosecution Authority;
- “US Departments” means the United States Department of State and the United States
Department of Justice.
Maurizi v The Information Commissioner & The Crown Prosecution Service (Interested P arty: Foreign &
Commonwealth Office) [2019] UKUT 262 (AAC)
GIA/973/2018
3
Summary
3. Since these reasons are unusually long, I set out here a summary of my conclusions:
(1) for the purposes of the qualified exemption from disclosure provided for by section 30 FOIA,
in relation to information relating to investigations and proceedings conducted by public
authorities, competing public interests are to be assessed according to circumstances as they
stood when a public authority refused a request for information;
(2) the FtT rightly conducted a public interest balancing exercise according to circumstances as
they stood in late 2015, when the CPS refused Ms Maurizi’s request for disclosure of the full
correspondence between the CPS and the SPA concerning a criminal investigation into Mr
Julian Assange;
(3) a three-judge panel of the Upper Tribunal in APPGER did not misread the Supreme Court’s
decision in Evans. I follow APPGER, as a three-judge panel decision, in in the absence of a
compelling reason not to do so;
(4) Ms Maurizi’s appeal against the FtT’s decision is dismissed in so far as the FtT’s decision
relates to the Information Commissioner’s decision that Ms Maurizi was not entitled to
disclosure of the full correspondence between the CPS and SPA concerning a criminal
investigation into Mr Assange;
(5) the FtT did not err in law in dismissing Ms Maurizi’s appeal against the Information
Commissioner decision notice in so far as it found that the CPS were entitled to refuse to
confirm or deny whether they held information in the form of correspondence with
Ecuadorean authorities about the case of Mr Assange. The FtT’s public interest balancing
exercise was not flawed as a result of being carried out by reference to hypothetically held
information relating only to the topic of extradition;
(6) The FtT did not err in law in dismissing Ms Maurizi’s appeal against the Information
Commissioner decision notice in so far as it found that the CPS were entitled to refuse to
confirm or deny whether they held information in the form of correspondence with the US
Departments about the case of Mr Assange. The FtT’s public interest balancing exercise was
not flawed by treating Mr Assange’s interest in disclosure as a personal interest.
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