Asked by: Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, which countries in the Middle East and North Africa her Department has assessed as able to provide safe refuge and access to essential services to refugees from Syria; and what estimate she has made of how many such refugees each of those countries could accommodate.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The countries in the Middle East assessed as able to provide safety and access to essential services are those where we currently support the host Governments to provide refuge: Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. The UK is also monitoring the treatment of Syrian refugees who have arrived in small numbers in Egypt and other part of North Africa.
The UK has been at the forefront of the response to the crisis in Syria and the region. The UK has pledged over £1.1 billion, our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis. Of this, we have allocated £559 million to support refugees in the region, including £304 million in Lebanon, £193 million in Jordan and the remainder across the region.
Asked by: Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, on how many occasions her Department applied the exemption in section 38(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (disclosure likely to endanger the physical or mental health of any individual) in wholly or partly refusing a freedom of information request in each of the last five years.
Answered by Grant Shapps
Statistics on the use of Freedom of Information exemptions are published by the Ministry of Justice (Table 10 of annual reports). They are available here https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics. These statistics provide the number of times section 38 as a whole has been used by each government department. Both sections 38(1)(a) and 38(1)(b) were used by DFID in all such cases.
Asked by: Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, on how many occasions her Department applied the exemption in section 38(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (disclosure likely to endanger the safety of any individual) in wholly or partly refusing a freedom of information request in each of the last five years.
Answered by Grant Shapps
Statistics on the use of Freedom of Information exemptions are published by the Ministry of Justice (Table 10 of annual reports). They are available here https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics. These statistics provide the number of times section 38 as a whole has been used by each government department. Both sections 38(1)(a) and 38(1)(b) were used by DFID in all such cases.
Asked by: Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what instructions have been given to staff in her Department dealing with freedom of information requests on the application of Freedom of Information Act Awareness Guidance No. 19, issued by the Information Commissioner's Office, in considering whether to apply the exemptions in section 38 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Answered by Grant Shapps
No guidance has been issued to staff on the application of Freedom of Information Act Awareness Guidance No.19, issued by the Information Commissioner's Office, about the application of section 38 of the Act. However, the Ministry of Justice has published its own guidance on the use of this exemption. This is available here: http://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-guidance-for-practitioners/exemptions-guidance.