The Met Police, the ICO, and the FOIA Request They Still Won't Answer Properly: Where Things Stand

Dr Chan Abraham
4 minutes ago
7 min read

Where We Are and Why It Matters

This is an update on my Freedom of Information Act request to the Metropolitan Police Service for the legal advice behind its decision not to investigate the Mayor of London's remarks defending the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Since my last post on 15 June, the Met Police has finally issued its internal review outcome, and the Information Commissioner's Office has still not made a decision on my complaint, despite now having everything it says it needs to do so.

The short version: the Met Police has upheld its refusal, but has not engaged with the central alternative I put to it twice – redacted or summarised disclosure. And the ICO, five months after I first complained, is now under a clear statutory duty to decide this case. I have told it so, in writing, citing the law.

The Met Police's Internal Review: Refusal Upheld, the Real Question Still Ducked

On 22 August 2026, the Met Police issued the outcome of its internal review into the refusal of my FOIA request for the legal advice underpinning the decision not to investigate the Mayor. The review upholds the original refusal in full, relying on section 40 (personal data) and section 42 (legal professional privilege) of the Act.

What it does not do is engage with the specific alternative I put to the Met Police, twice, in writing: redacted or summarised disclosure. My original request on 20 March 2026 (FOIA request 01/FOI/26/051528/S)invited exactly this – release of the substance of the advice, with the names of individual lawyers and officers removed. My internal review request in 24 June 2026 repeated the point. The review's answer, in substance, is that because names appear somewhere in the correspondence, none of it can be released. That is not a considered rejection of redaction. It is a failure to consider it at all.

In my view, that omission matters. A refusal built on personal data should explain why redaction cannot solve the problem, not simply assert that personal data is present and stop there.

A Pattern That Keeps Repeating

The internal review was requested on 24 June 2026. The guideline 40-working-day deadline for a response was 2 August 2026. The outcome did not arrive until 22 August – three weeks late, with an apology from the Met Police for the delay.

This is not an isolated slip. It is the third dated instance of the same pattern in this case alone: an admitted breach of the statutory 20-working-day deadline on my original request, a separate internal review that took over 150 days to answer, and now this. and the Met Police responsible for every one of them.

The ICO: Five Months In, Still No Decision

I complained to the Information Commissioner's Office about the Met Police's refusal on 1 June 2026. What has followed since is a case study in an organisation that has, until now, found reasons not to engage rather than reasons to act.

On 19 June, the ICO caseworker told me my complaint was not yet eligible to proceed and asked for four documents. I provided her with all four by 24 June. On 26 June, rather than confirming eligibility, the ICO caseworker introduced a new condition that appeared nowhere in her original request: that nothing could happen until a 40-day deadline on a separate MPS internal review had passed.

On 9 July, I wrote a detailed letter challenging that position, and asking six specific questions be escalated to senior management, with four confirmations requested within 7 days. On 17 July, the ICO caseworker's reply ignored every one of those six questions and four requests, and simply repeated her earlier position – misquoting, in the process, the date of my own internal review request.

By 23 July, with that response unaddressed, I formally invoked the ICO's own complaints procedure over how my case was being handled. I was directed to a service complaint form on 24 July, which I completed and submitted on 30 July. The ICO's own policy commits to acknowledging such complaints within 14 days. That deadline passed on 13 August. It has still not been acknowledged.

On 20 August, I gave the ICO final notice: confirm the complaint is being investigated, acknowledge the service complaint, and answer the outstanding questions, within 7 days. That deadline falls as this post is written.

Why the Law Requires the ICO to Decide, Now

The ICO does not have unlimited discretion to keep waiting. Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act is explicit: once a complaint is made, the Commissioner “shall make a decision” unless one of four specific things applies – the complainant hasn't exhausted the public authority's own complaints process, there has been undue delay in complaining, the complaint is frivolous or vexatious, or it has been withdrawn or abandoned.

None of those four things is true here. The Met Police's internal review is now complete. I complained within six weeks of the original refusal. Nothing in five months of correspondence has suggested frivolity. And I have pursued this, in writing, consistently and in detail, for five months.

That leaves the ICO with a duty, not a choice. I have said so, in writing, and asked it to either issue a decision or state, in writing, the specific legal ground on which it believes it does not have to.

What Happens Next on the FOIA Complaint

I have now provided the Met Police's internal review outcome to the ICO and asked it to proceed to a decision on the merits – focusing on the redaction question the Met Police still has not answered, and on whether advice that is now nearly two years old, and general rather than case-specific, can really justify continued secrecy.

I have also given my constituency MP advance notice that I may need his help referring this matter to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, if the ICO's final deadline passes without a proper response.

The IOPC: Power of Initiative Declined

Alongside the FOIA matter, I separately invited the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) to exercise its statutory power of initiative under Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 – a power that allows it to open an independent investigation without waiting for a complaint or force referral, where it considers it in the public interest to do so. I asked it to look at A/DCI Rudd's original decision, the MPS's handling of the resulting conduct complaint, and the appropriateness of directing that complaint's review to MOPAC – the Mayor's own office.

The IOPC replied on 23 June 2026 (reference 2026/001227). It confirmed that it cannot usually act where a police force is the relevant authority for a complaint, and that the choice of review body is a decision for the force itself, applying a legal test under Regulation 32 of the Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2020 – not a decision the IOPC can generally overturn. On the power of initiative specifically, the IOPC stated plainly that, having reviewed the correspondence, “the severity threshold has not been met,” and that it would not be exercising the power.

The IOPC's letter confirmed that any objection to MOPAC being the review body needed to be raised with MOPAC directly – which I had already done – and that if I remained dissatisfied once that review concluded, the applicable route beyond that would be judicial review.

In my view, a case involving the elected official (Sadiq Khan, London Mayor) who holds statutory oversight of the very force that investigated him is exactly the kind of structural conflict the power of initiative exists for. The IOPC has taken a different view. That is now on the public record, alongside everything else.

MOPAC: Recusal Request Declined, Review Could Take Eight Months

I also applied to the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) on 15 June 2026 for a review of the conduct complaint outcome (reference PC/13271/25) – the finding that A/DCI Rudd's original decision not to investigate had been “acceptable” service. Alongside that application, I formally submitted that MOPAC should recuse itself from the review entirely and refer the matter to the IOPC instead, given that MOPAC is the Mayor's own office reviewing a complaint that concerns the Mayor.

MOPAC replied on 17 July 2026. It confirmed that the choice of review body is made by the MPS, applying guidance set by the IOPC – consistent with what the IOPC itself later told me. Having considered the position, MOPAC stated that it was “satisfied that MOPAC is the correct Review body” for this complaint, and that it would now request the relevant information from the MPS to carry out its review.

One figure in that reply is worth stating plainly: MOPAC's letter says reviews are currently taking up to eight months to complete from the date they are first requested. On that timescale, a review requested on 15 June 2026 could run until as late as February 2027.

Taken together with the Met Police's own delays and the ICO's five months without a decision, every route I have pursued in this matter – the police force itself, its regulator, its independent conduct body, and its Mayoral oversight body – is, on the evidence so far, moving slowly. I will report the outcome of the MOPAC review, whenever it arrives.

What Happens Next

I will publish the next update as soon as there is one. This case has taken five months to reach the point where a public body has a straightforward, legally quoted duty to act. That, in itself, tells its own story.