Request

‘For this I officially will ask under the freedom of information act to provide the relevant paperwork to prove that ALL families who are classified as worse off financially no longer receive help from the scheme, EVEN though literature completely states the polar opposite.’

On 15 September 2022 you clarified your request as follows. We have numbered these to allow us to ensure each point is correctly understood, and to allow us to answer each separately:

The information we are requesting should have been provided prior to this stage, the requests are as follows:

1. Specific date/dates as to when the eligibility issue was officially logged as an issue/problem.

2. Name/names and job titles of who officially logged the eligibility issue/problem.

3. Official number of Employment Support Allowance recipient's who have complained of same eligibility issue/problem.

4. Official statistic total number of ESA recipient's in UK to compare the number of complainants against actual number of claimants who have a child under four and in receipt of ESA quoted in literature, also full numbers statistically of Child Tax Credits/Universal Credit recipient's who are receiving milk tokens on the scheme with a child under the age of four.

5. Name/names and job titles of who instructed/employed the said lawyers.

6. All email and telephone correspondence between all named staff involved and contacted the lawyers.

7. Name/names of lawyer/lawyers instructed/employed to the case.

8. Name/names of all at lawyers firm of practice complete with full contact details of said lawyers business and what line of law they practice.

9. All dates/times/minutes logged of all meetings that would have taken place either face to face or virtually as well as all names and job titles of attendees at these given meetings.

10. Names of establishments where face to face meetings have taken place as well as duration of any meetings face to face or virtually.

11. A full and complete expenditure/spends/costs/ list, this includes for instance all business meetings, telecommunications, business lunches, hiring of function room/conference room facilities complete with a full dated list of any taken place meetings as well as any travel expenses that may have occurred for any attendees in said meetings.

12. All online/written literature connected to the Healthy Start Milk Token Scheme and the eligibility policy between the years of 2018 - 2022.

13. All dates and names and job titles of all those connected to either Serco, NHSBSA and Healthy Start complete with all documents/paperwork between the years of 2018 - 2022 to confirm who was responsible and when for the eligibility policies through this complete time period.

14. All official policy documents between the years of 2018 - 2022, this includes obvious previous policy, reviewed policy, amended policy and current up to date policy with complete clarification of which body out of Serco, NHSBSA and Healthy Start are actually responsible all of which would be stamped, dated and signed by all professionals involved whichever policy we are going by and whomever it may lie with.

15. Name/names and job titles of whomever accepted any given policy to adhere to between the years of 2018 - 2022.

16. Last but not least a full and frank written justification of penalizing families who are in receipt of ESA and informing them they are no longer entitled to the milk token scheme but yet willingly will hand out assistance to those in a better financial position being in receipt of Child Tax Credits/Universal Credit complete with an official apology for the amount of anxiety and stress this whole situation has had on the family, not to mention completely contradicting any eat healthy advice and promoting milk is good for teeth and bones for developing children in their early years, without sounding sarcastic when I ask in general, have you any idea how much milk costs, especially when a child likes drinking it or enjoys breakfast time eating cereal?'

Response

We have set out our response to each question separately as follows.

Question 1 and 2

I am writing to advise you that the information you requested is not held by the NHS Business Services Authority.

There was no issue identified with eligibility – this was a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) policy decision. If you wish to ask them any questions regarding eligibility, please write to:

Ministerial Correspondence and Public Enquiries Unit Department of Health and Social Care 39 Victoria Street London SW1H 0EU Contact form https://contactus.dhsc.gov.uk/

Question 3

There have been 5 complaints directly relating to those in receipt of Income Related Employment Support Allowance and have a child. These have been captured under a specific category. In order to identify any others which weren’t assigned to that category, we would need to scrutinise approx. 1400 complaints to identify if the complaint meets the same description. Using a conservative estimate of 2 minutes per complaint, we estimate that it would take approx. 46 hours to locate, retrieve and extract this information.

Therefore, I estimate that the cost of complying with this part of your request would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The limit has been specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, the NHSBSA is not obliged to comply with your request and I will not be processing this part of your request further as it currently stands.

Question 4

We do not hold information on the overall number of citizens receiving Employment Support Allowance (ESA).

However, it is possible that Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) may hold some or all of the information you require. They can be contacted at:

Freedom of Information Requests Department of Work and Pensions Caxton House Tothill Street London SW1H 9NA Email freedom-of-information-request@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

[The NHSBSA sought further clarification as follows] Regarding “claimants” do you mean Healthy Start, or do you mean non-pregnant women on CTC and UC?

Questions 5 to 11

I am writing to advise you that the information you requested is not held by the NHS Business Services Authority. Any legal advice taken regarding policy decisions would be obtained by/provided to DHSC, not the NHSBSA. You can contact DHSC at the address provided above.

Question 12

We have provided you with access to all Healthy Start leaflets created from 2018 to date. Due to the size of the files, we are unable to supply these via email. We have uploaded these to our secure Egress portal, and we have shared access to these files to you. You will notice quite a lot of similarities between the documents. These were the leaflets used in each year since 2018.

Please note that we do not hold policy documents. DHSC sets policy regarding the Healthy Start scheme. Please contact them at the address provided above.

Other information is available on our website at the below web link:

https://media.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/resources/f/nhs-healthy-start-scheme/digital-scheme-jan-2022

Question 13

[The NHSBSA sought further clarification as follows] We do not understand what you are asking when you state “dates” and “documents/paperwork”. If you wish to know the names of all Healthy Start staff then please be mindful that decisions on disclosure of staff details will be taken in accordance with data protection law, taking into account if it’s fair to disclose names of colleagues. Please can you further clarify what information you are asking for here?

Question 14 and 15

As explained above, DHSC sets policy regarding the Healthy Start scheme. Please contact them for this information as outlined above.

Question 16

I am writing to advise you that following a search of our paper and electronic records, I have established that the information you requested is not held by the NHS Business Services Authority. The premise of FOI is to request information which is held by public authorities and not for information to be generated. Providing the justifications/explanations described in your request would involve generating new information.

Unfortunately, this disclosure log does not currently support the file type which the requested information has been provided in. If you wish to request the information which was disclosed in response, please contact nhsbsa.foirequests@nhs.net quoting the above reference number.

Please note our requests for further clarification for questions 4 and 13. We need further clarity on what information you are requesting.

Data Queries

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing the data please contact dataandinsightsupport@nhsbsa.nhs.uk / foidata@nhsbsa.nhs.uk / nhsbsa.foirequests@nhs.net ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact nhsbsa.communicationsteam@nhs.net. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “Healthy Start, NHSBSA Copyright 2022” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.