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The UK’s financial watchdog failed to uphold rules for handling requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an internal review commissioned after an employee blew the whistle on “unlawful” conduct.
The Financial Conduct Authority “inappropriately” delayed responding to all but one of 18 requests for information it received between July and December 2020, according to the review seen by the Financial Times.
“We found that the time extensions were inappropriately used in 17 cases . . . following concerns being raised by a member of the [FOI] team,” the review said.
Introduced by Tony Blair’s government in 2000, FOI legislation allows the public a general right of access to information from public bodies and is aimed at ensuring they remain accountable.
Under the rules, public authorities must provide requested information within 20 working days unless one of several exemptions apply, such as if the release of data would endanger national security and personal safety.
But a review commissioned by the FCA after an employee involved in FOI processing complained that their team was dealing with the requests in an “unlawful” manner found the watchdog had made “substantial inappropriate use” of a time extension in handling requests for information.
Staff at the watchdog had used the time extension — which should be used only when evaluating the public interest in publishing the information — in order to give themselves extra time to consider avenues to block FOI requests, the review found, calling the practice “expressly prohibited”.
Evidence that employees discussed the public interest during the extra time was “extremely limited”, it added.
Analysis by the internal oversight team, which conducted the review, of a separate sample of six cases dating from 2018 and 2019 showed the extension had been misused in five of them.
The review adds to criticism of the FCA, which has been found wanting by several public inquiries. In November a group of MPs and peers accused the watchdog of being “incompetent at best, dishonest at worst” and called for a major overhaul after finding “very significant shortcomings”.
The report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Investment Fraud and Fairer Financial Services also said whistleblowers were “criticised, bullied and sidelined”.
Separately in August, the FT reported that FCA chair Ashley Alder had been accused of breaching a whistleblower’s confidentiality by forwarding their emails after the person had written to Alder asking for help.
The regulator’s senior independent director found after an internal review that Alder “did not follow the [whistleblowing] policy to the letter” in forwarding correspondence from whistleblowers to others within the FCA without protecting their anonymity. But he cleared Alder of wrongdoing.
The FCA employee whose complaint triggered the FOI review said the watchdog’s use of the extension on requests for information was intended to manipulate performance figures.
The person was dismissed from the regulator in 2023 after a two-year suspension and is awaiting the start of an employment tribunal.
“Senior managers are focused on not allowing any embarrassment,” the former employee said.
The review did not conclude whether the failure was a misunderstanding or intentional but found “insufficient resource, inefficiency, poor processes, lack of capability, or a combination” could be at its root.
It recommended that the FCA “retrain all members of staff” on the matter, including senior leadership.
The FCA said it had “identified errors in a small minority of the hundreds of cases we deal with annually”, commissioned the review and overhauled the FOI function with new management and processes.
“We made improvements and transparently admitted our mistake in our annual report and corrected the historic data,” the watchdog said, adding that it now met statutory deadlines in more than 90 per cent of cases.
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