Salary Support Scheme Beneficiaries

Summary

A request was made for records of beneficiaries and payment amounts for the Isle of Man Salary Support Scheme, but no information was disclosed as it was held for future publication or exempt under data protection and health and safety laws.

Key Facts

• The Treasury received the request on 2022-01-21 and responded on 2022-04-29.
• Most requested information is exempt under Section 41 as it is scheduled for public release on 4 May 2022.
• Some information is absolutely exempt under Section 25(b) as it constitutes personal data.
• Additional information is exempt under Section 36 due to potential risks to health and safety.
• The request covered scheme iterations in both 2020 and 2021.

Data Disclosed

• 2022-01-21
• 2022-04-29
• 4 May 2022
• 2020
• 2021
• Section 41
• Section 25(b)
• Section 36(a)
• Section 36(b)
• Article 5
• Article 6

Exemptions Cited

• Section 41 (Information for future publication)
• Section 25(b) (Absolutely exempt personal information)
• Section 36(a) and (b) (Health and safety)

Original Request

Records of beneficiaries of the salary support scheme, and the amounts paid to each beneficiary By "records" I mean as defined in the Freedom of Information Act ("the act"). By "beneficiaries" I mean the organisations that benefited from payments By "the salary support scheme" I mean all iterations (in both 2020 and 2021 calendar years) of the program outlined here: https://covid19.gov.im/media/1120/salary-support-scheme-guidance-final-revised-17.pdf By "amounts paid" I mean the sum paid to each individual organisation. In accordance with the act, I ask that the information be provided to me in a spreadsheet format (MS Excel spreadsheet; Open Document spreadsheet; Comma separated value sheet) and *not* portable document format.

Data Tables (1)

Full Response Text

The Treasury

Yn Tashtey

Dear

REFERENCE NUMBER: 2195299 REQUEST UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2015 (“the Act”)

I write further to your request of 21 January 2022, which asks as follows –

Records of beneficiaries of the salary support scheme, and the amounts paid to each beneficiary

By "records" I mean as defined in the Freedom of Information Act ("the act"). By "beneficiaries" I mean the organisations that benefited from payments By "the salary support scheme" I mean all iterations (in both 2020 and 2021 calendar years) of the program outlined here: https://covid19.gov.im/media/1120/salary-support-scheme-guidance-final- revised-17.pdf By "amounts paid" I mean the sum paid to each individual organisation.

In accordance with the act, I ask that the information be provided to me in a spreadsheet format (MS Excel spreadsheet; Open Document spreadsheet; Comma separated value sheet) and not portable document format.

As per our subsequent correspondence, and recognising that your request was submitted to the Treasury whilst the final claim period of the scheme was still open for claims, you confirmed that you would be content to receive this information as at the point in time the scheme was fully closed to new claims.

You will note from our subsequent correspondence that the Treasury had an intention to publish this information at the time your request was received and I advised you that Treasury would likely need to apply an exemption to the disclosure of this information to you ahead of the future publication date. Furthermore, I advised you that we had not yet concluded deliberations as to whether we might be unable to publish certain elements of the information we held and that whilst these deliberations were ongoing, we could not yet conclude our response to your FOI request. Freedom of Information Seyrsnys Fysseree

The Treasury Government Office,
Douglas Isle of Man,
British Isles IM1 3PU

Telephone (01624) 685605 Email: FOI.Treasury@gov.im

Government Website: www.gov.im Date: 29 April 2022

Accordingly, we have now concluded our considerations on this matter and I can respond to your request as follows –

Most of the information you have requested is exempt from disclosure under section 41 of the Act (Information for future publication) as it is being held with a view to being published at a future date. It is anticipated that this publication will be released on 4 May 2022. In all the circumstances, it is reasonable that this information be withheld from disclosure until that time.

As section 41 is a qualified exemption, it is subject to a public interest test. The public interest must be something that is of serious concern and benefit to the public at large.

Factors in favour of disclosure • Public interest in transparency.

Factors in favour of maintaining the exemption • Disclosure of the information is imminent. • There is a general public interest in providing members of the local community with access to the information at the same time.

In taking these factors into account, the Treasury determines that the factors in favour of maintaining the exemption outweigh the factors in favour of disclosure.

As noted earlier, some of the information you have requested will not be disclosed as part of this forthcoming disclosure in respect of which the section 41 exemption has been applied.

We have concluded that this information is exempt from disclosure to you in response to this request on the following grounds –

Some of the information subject to disclosure is absolutely exempt from disclosure under section 25(b) of the Act (absolutely exempt personal information). The reasons why that exemption applies are as that – • The Treasury is satisfied that the information amounts to personal data of which you are not the data subject; and • The Treasury is satisfied that disclosure of the information would contravene one of the data protection principles as set out at Article 5 of the General Data Protection Regulation as it applies in the Isle of Man pursuant to the Data Protection (Application of GDPR) Order 2018, namely that the Treasury can only disclose the information where it would be fair, lawful and meet one of the conditions for lawful processing in Article 6 and in this case, none of those conditions have been met.

Some of the information subject to disclosure is exempt under section 36(a) and (b) of the Act (Health and safety) as disclosure would be likely to endanger the physical or mental health of any individual and the safety of an individual.

As section 36 is a qualified exemption, it is subject to a public interest test. The public interest must be something that is of serious concern and benefit to the public at large.

Factors in favour of disclosure • Public interest in transparency.

Factors in favour of maintaining the exemption • It is never in the public interest to endanger the health and safety of an individual.

In taking all of these factors into account, the Treasury determines that the factors in favour of maintaining the exemption outweigh the factors in favour of disclosure.

Your right to request a review
If you are unhappy with this response to your freedom of information request, you may ask us to carry out an internal review of the response, by completing a complaint form and submitting it electronically or by delivery/post.

An electronic version of our complaint form can be found by going to our website at
https://services.gov.im/freedom-of-information/Review. If you would like a paper version of our complaint form to be sent to you by post, please contact me and I will be happy to arrange for this. Your review request should explain why you are dissatisfied with this response, and should be made as soon as practicable. We will respond as soon as the review has been concluded.

If you are not satisfied with the result of the review, you then have the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner for a decision on;

1. Whether we have responded to your request for information in accordance with Part 2 of the Freedom of Information Act 2015; or
2. Whether we are justified in refusing to give you the information requested.

In response to an application for review, the Information Commissioner may, at any time, attempt to resolve a matter by negotiation, conciliation, mediation or another form of alternative dispute resolution and will have regard to any outcome of this in making any subsequent decision.

More detailed information on your right to a review can be found on the Information
Commissioner’s website at www.inforights.im.

Should you have any queries concerning this letter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Further information about freedom of information requests can be found at www.gov.im/foi.

I will now close your request as of this date.

Yours sincerely,

FOI Coordinator, the Treasury