There is something quietly surreal about watching the Ministry of Justice accuse a citizen of “improper use of formal procedure” for doing one simple thing.
Asking for the numbers.
Not secret intelligence. Not covert operations. Just complaints data. How many people complained about the Probation Service North East region. What they complained about. How often complaints were upheld. How long it took to resolve them.
In any serious democracy, that is textbook public interest material.
In the Ministry of Justice’s world, it is apparently a “personal vendetta”.
This is a case study in how a department that should model legality slips into using the Freedom of Information Act as a shield against embarrassment, then gets caught contradicting itself in writing.
And because I am preserving every line of this for oversight bodies, I am also putting it on the public record.
The request they could not handle
The FOI in question, reference 250929042, asked for aggregated management information on complaints to the Probation Service North East region from 2024 onwards. Totals, breakdowns, categories, outcomes, referrals to bodies like the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, and some basic context.
No personal data.
No free text review.
CSV or spreadsheet acceptable.
Exactly the sort of information central government claims to collect and monitor as part of “learning from complaints”.
In response, the Ministry of Justice did not say:
- “We do not hold this information”, or
- “Here are the figures”, or
- “Section 12 applies, here is our cost estimate and how you could refine”.
Instead, they pulled the fire alarm.
The department declared the request “vexatious” under section 14(1) FOIA, accused me of using FOI for a personal agenda, and suggested my behaviour amounted to an improper use of formal process.
It would be insulting if it was not so revealing.
Their own internal review has already exposed them
A few weeks earlier, the same Ministry issued an internal review decision under reference 250917054.
That letter quietly admits that an earlier refusal using section 14 had been unlawful. The department had previously labelled a set of questions a “repeated request” under section 14(2). When challenged, an independent reviewer looked at the file and effectively concluded:
- Section 14 was the wrong provision.
- The earlier refusal should have relied on section 12 (cost limit) instead.
- It was “regrettable” that the section 14 draft went out at all.
That alone is serious. It means one formal decision was wrong in law and had to be corrected after the fact.
But then look at what happens next.
Despite acknowledging that section 14 had been misused once, and despite accepting that the real issue in that earlier request was cost, the Ministry’s next move, when faced with a refined, management information only complaints request, is to fall straight back on section 14 again.
No cost estimate.
No search description.
No discussion of refinement.
No offer to release what is easy and explain what is hard.
Just a sweeping statement that the request is vexatious and supposedly lacks serious purpose.
The word that comes to mind is not “regrettable”. It is “pattern”.
When you cannot answer the question, attack the person
The refusal for FOI 250929042 spends much more effort criticising me than addressing the request.
The Ministry claims that:
- I am pursuing a “personal vendetta”.
- I have adopted a “confrontational” approach and tone.
- My requests are part of an unreasonable pattern.
- Their staff are facing “disruption, irritation or distress”.
There are no examples. No dates. No quotations. No evidence.
A separate internal review even claims that my emails contain “insulting language” and “threats against individuals and or the department”. Again, not a single sentence from my correspondence is actually cited.
For a department that insists it is drowning in my material, it is striking how reluctant it is to produce even one concrete extract that would stand up in front of a judge.
The accusation is the point. The detail never arrives.
This is not the behaviour of an authority applying ICO guidance carefully. It is the behaviour of an authority that has decided a person is a problem and is now retrofitting language to justify that position.
Tone policing as a control tool
There is a clear pattern that disabled and marginalised people will recognise immediately.
You:
- Point out deadlines have been missed.
- Explain that last minute clarification requests are not “timely advice and assistance”.
- Ask who authorised particular handling decisions.
- Record in writing that the behaviour looks obstructive.
- Make it clear the evidence is being preserved for regulators and courts.
They:
- Call you “confrontational”.
- Say you are pursuing a “vendetta”.
- Start muttering about “threats”.
- Reach for section 14.
It is textbook tone policing. The issue is not the content. The issue is the discomfort caused by someone who knows the law and keeps score when it is broken.
What never appears in their letters is any serious engagement with the underlying subject matter: safeguarding, equality compliance, data protection risks, and the basic question of how many people are complaining about their experience of probation.
Apparently, the numbers are less important than the temerity of the person asking for them.
The Equality Act angle they would rather not see
I have made it clear, repeatedly, that my communication needs fall within the Equality Act 2010. I have requested reasonable adjustments, including:
- Clear written communication rather than phone calls.
- Predictable handling of deadlines and clarifications.
- Electronic provision of information.
Against that backdrop, the Ministry’s escalation to “vexatious” and its vague rhetoric about my supposed behaviour raises obvious questions.
When a disabled requester:
- insists on written clarity,
- insists on deadlines being honoured,
- insists on proper use of exemptions, and
- insists on keeping a documented record,
and the response is to treat that as harassment of the department, there is a real risk that “vexatious” becomes a proxy for “too assertive for our comfort”.
That is not merely poor customer service. It sits uneasily with public sector equality duties.
Why this should worry everybody else
It would be easy to frame this as a personal clash between one autistic ex offender with a website and a tired government department.
That is how they want it framed. That is why they talk about vendettas and personal agenda.
Because if the story is just “one difficult man and his tone”, they never have to address the real point.
The real point is this:
If the Ministry of Justice can label a complaints statistics request “vexatious” purely because the requester is persistent, well organised and critical of their performance, then any person who tries to use FOI seriously is at risk of the same treatment.
If an internal review can admit that section 14 was misused in one case, then watch the same provision reappear almost immediately against the same requester, what does that say about internal controls.
If a department that claims to champion transparency and accountability is this hostile to basic probation complaints data, what confidence should the public have that problems inside probation are being confronted rather than buried.
This is not about my feelings. It is about whether rights exist only on paper, or in practice.
How a grown up department would have handled it
A competent, confident Ministry would have:
- Acknowledged that complaints data for a probation region is inherently in the public interest.
- Explained frankly what datasets exist and what do not.
- Applied section 12 properly, if necessary, with a costed estimate.
- Invited a refined scope if parts of the request were too broad.
- Released what could easily be released without drama.
- Avoided personalised language completely.
Instead, we have:
- A pattern of incorrect section 14 usage.
- An internal review admitting an earlier refusal was wrong in law.
- A fresh section 14 refusal that ignores that history.
- Sweeping and unparticularised allegations about my “tone” and motives.
- Silence on the actual complaints figures.
That is not good enough from any public authority. From the Ministry responsible for prisons, probation and justice, it is embarrassing.
What happens next
I have already:
- Requested an internal review of the latest section 14 refusal.
- Demanded that the Ministry particularise every allegation it intends to rely on, including dates, quotes and internal labels.
- Put them on notice that the material will be preserved for the Information Commissioner, the Parliamentary Ombudsman via my MP and, if necessary, the courts.
If they can stand up their claims about my behaviour, they can do it in detail. If they cannot, they should withdraw them, apologise, and get on with answering the question about complaints data.
Either outcome is useful. Both outcomes tell the public something important about how the Ministry of Justice handles scrutiny.
The wider point is simple:
A government department should not be humbled by a single citizen with a laptop and a working knowledge of FOIA. It should hold itself to a higher standard before anyone else needs to.
If it will not, then people like me will keep testing it until it learns.
Because the alternative is this. The people with the most power, and the most to hide, also get to decide who is allowed to ask questions.
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