Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, when and for what reason her Department adopted a policy of categorising Freedom of Information requests according to the workplace of certain individuals making requests; and which Minister or official is responsible for the introduction of that policy.

The Department has a standard set of processes to respond to all Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and these are applied regardless of who the request is from. The case management system does not categorise the workplace of individual requestors. The Department tracks timeliness and progress of responses in addition to the sensitivity of the information in all FOI cases. The Department’s case management system helps evidence our compliance with our FOI obligations.