Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the average time taken by his Department to respond to freedom of information requests in the 2022-23 financial year.

The Cabinet Office publishes statistics for FOI requests for all central government departments and other monitored bodies, which can be found on www.gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics.

The Prime Minister’s Office is part of the Cabinet Office for the purpose of FOI requests. In 2022 the Cabinet Office responded to 92% of FOI requests within time and for Quarter 1 of 2023 this rose to 96%. This is well above the standard set by the Information Commissioner. The Cabinet Office continually monitors and looks for ways to improve its performance.