Dear Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment,

Please advise me whether all unpaid debts relating to people required to stay in MIQ facilities during 2021 have now been written off, or if collection efforts remain under way.

If collection efforts remain under way, please provide a list of all unpaid MIQ debts that have not been written off and remain subject to collection action, showing in each case invoice number, invoice date and amount of debt. (I am not asking for any personal information relating to the debtors.)

This information will be simple and quick to extract from your system, and so I would not expect you to require anything like the maximum 20 working days to respond, given that the legal requirement is to respond as soon as reasonably practicable.

Yours faithfully,

R S Grant

Dear LSE Ministerial Servicing,

Thank you for this response, but I specifically stated that I was not asking for any details of individual debtors - I am only asking for a list of unpaid invoices with invoice numbers and amounts for each. There is no way in which that information could possible “breach the privacy of natural persons”.

Please can you reconsider your refusal with this in mind.

Yours sincerely,

R S Grant

Dear LSE Ministerial Servicing,

Thank you for your reply, and I appreciate your efforts to provide some level of useful information.

I would nonetheless like to draw your attention to the guidance of the Privacy Commissioner regarding personal information. They say:

“The information does not need to name the individual, as long as they are identifiable in other ways, like through their home address or another identifier, or if their identity could be pieced together. The question is whether there's a reasonable chance that someone could be identified from the information. Any information that you can look at and say "this is about X” may be considered personal information, if X is an identifiable person.”

I would respectfully submit that providing an invoice number and the amount of the invoice would not enable anyone’s identity to be pieced together!

Yours sincerely,

R S Grant

Dear LSE Ministerial Servicing,

Is there any update on this request?

Yours sincerely,

R S Grant