A pathetic and unacceptable response from the Home Office is shown below. I will be asking for an internal review, and if necessary, an appeal to the Commissioner.

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Thank you for your e-mail dated 1 February 2005 in which you asked for information relating to the Home office’s use, with particular reference to the IND, of 0870 telephone numbers. We are now in a position to offer a substantive reply to your request.

After having carefully considered your request and having examined the information that you requested in your letter I am pleased to be able to disclose the following information that you have requested.

The decision  on the use of 0870 telephone numbers by the IND was taken by the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, in March 1998 because it offered considerable benefits in terms of the Home Office’s ability to better manage the service and therefore improve the quality of service to customers.  Ministers’ agreement was given on the understanding that IND kept a close eye on the level of service under the new arrangements and on the understanding that IND reinvest any monies earned back into improving the telephone bureau operation and thereby customer service.  This has been done, £0.75M was used in Spring 2002 to purchase a brand new switchboard with increased functionality for INEB.

The IND have further informed me that they do not have geographical telephone numbers for their public telephone service, this service can only be accessed through dialing the 0870 number.

The core Home Office’s main switchboard telephone number is another 0870 number and there is no geographical equivalent that can be dialed for it either. The switchboard further informed me that they use the national 0870 number as the Home Office deals only with internal national issues, so there is no need for them to have a switchboard number that is internationally accessible.

The Home Office does not hold any minutes of meetings relating to Ministerial decisions on the use of 0870 numbers. 

I know that some of this information may come as a disappointment to you, but I can assure you that the Home office did instigate a thorough search for the information you asked for and I have provided you with all of the information that was found. It has been suggested to me that any queries you have should be made via e-mail to the Home office’s public enquiries team.

May I also apologize to you for the delay in responding to your request. I am afraid that it took us longer than anticipated to locate the relevant information.

If however you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of any aspect of our handling of your application. During the internal review the department’s handling of your information request will be reassessed by staff who were not involved in providing you with this response. An internal review can be requested by submitting your complaint to:

Information Policy Team
Record Management Service
Home Office
4th Floor, Seacole Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Should you remain dissatisfied after this internal review, you will have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Probably a very silly coment but can you ask for the geographic number under the new freedom of information act?

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The response shown *is* as a result of a freedom of information (FOI) request. I have asked for an internal review and, if that does not provide the number, an appeal to the Information Commissioner will follow. The Home Office/IND is being evasive and inaccurate and this is not acceptable for a public body.

1. Geographic equivalent numbers
I can tell you that the geographic equivalent telephone numbers for IND and the Home Office do in fact exist.  They are as follows:
Immigration General and Progress Enquiries: 0208 253 6700 (0870 606 7766)
Immigration Application Forms: 0208 253 6703 (0870 241 0645)
Home Office: 020 7035 4747
The geographic number for the Home Office (as above), which underlies the 0870 000 1585 number introduced in July 2002, has always been available on request from the public enquiry switchboard to anyone who wanted it.  However it will now be published on the Home Office website.  

When your request for information was received in February my colleague, Stephen Sowerby, contacted staff in IND and the core Home Office asking for information relating to your request both for the phone numbers themselves and for the background information which you also requested.  On receiving negative responses about the phone numbers, he contacted the telephone company (Global Crossing) itself.  They were also unable to provide geographic numbers for the Immigration and Nationality Enquiry Bureau.  I can confirm that you were given all the information that was available to Mr Sowerby at the time.

When I was asked to review the information and correspondence relating to your request I asked colleagues in IND again about the apparent lack of any numbers for callers from overseas to contact their office.  I can assure you that they made every effort to find out whether there were geographical equivalents to the 0870 numbers at the time of your original request.  However it was not until 9 June that it came to light that these numbers do exist and they were supplied to me on 30 June.

I understand that these numbers have not yet been publicised in the UK for operational reasons.  Callers using numbers prefixed with 0208 avoid the IND call routing plans and in effect their calls are queued ahead of users of the 0870 numbers.  In addition IND are unable to obtain statistical data from 0208 numbers.  Statistical information gleaned from 0870 numbers is vital to IND for  business planning and staffing purposes.  

I can only apologise for the failure to provide you with this information at an earlier stage.  I can assure you that this was not done to deliberately frustrate you.  

...continued

Going back to the HO's original response:

"The switchboard further informed me that they use the national 0870 number as the Home Office deals only with internal national issues, so there is no need for them to have a switchboard number that is internationally accessible. "

This has to be one of the most utterly stupid statements that has ever been made by a British government civil servant.

Home Office - deals with, inter alia, police matters, internal security matters, terrorism, immigration, criminal records and many more activities.

Why did they conclude that there is no need to receive calls from overseas? Amazing!

I wrote to Tony Blair about the use of 0870 for the London Bombing and today received a reply from Ian Bloom, HomeOffice as my enquiry was passed on to him from the PM's office.

The reply was nothing new and mentioned what is already known but what I thought was interesting is that Ian Bloom mentioned the use of 0870 numbers that the HomeOffice itself uses, and I quote:-
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Now I still notice that their website still mentions the 0870 number and I'm going to email back (the letter I received was in snail-mail) and query this with him.

Amazing!

My favorite bit is:

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Maybe another FOI request to explain how exactly it "came to light"!!!

It seems that the standard response to many FOI requests is taken straight from the "Sir Humphrey" manual on the Civil Service: Deny/block/smokescreen the initial request in the knowledge that 75% of enquirers will not then move on to request an internal review etc...