FOI-2023-1510
You asked
Please disclose all correspondence between UKSA / ONS and the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) regarding the Memorandum of Understanding signed in September 2022 by the UK National Statistician, Sir Ian Diamond and Dr Ola Awad of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Please specifically confirm that this agreement was and still is in line with UK foreign policy and endorsed by government ministers.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We can confirm that the agreement referenced was in line with UK foreign policy and was endorsed by the British Consulate General in Jerusalem, which represents the UK government in Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza.
The agreement ended in April 2023. Currently we still work with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and, also, the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel, on an ad-hoc basis.
The ONS ensures that any work undertaken with these organisations is in line with all HM Government policies, including the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
In order to provide the requested correspondence between UKSA/ONS and the FCDO regarding the Memorandum of Understanding with PCBS, an extensive search would need to be carried out of the SharePoint directories, shared drives, local drives and desktops, and email accounts of every member of staff working on this topic. The time frame of this request also covers at least 1½ years’ worth of emails, letters, and reports.
As our organisation corresponds with the FCDO on a near-daily basis, the volume of material we would need to search for, locate, extract, and collate would be excessive. The cost limit for replying to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request is £600 or 24-hours work, and in our view, we would need to exceed this with your request. Therefore, Section 12 of FOIA is engaged, whereby a public authority is not obliged to answer a request if the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit.
We would therefore advise limiting the scope of your request so that we can answer within the cost limit. This can be done by limiting the time frame of your request and focus the request on a more specific topic.