Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, 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.

For the majority of the financial year 2022-23 the FCDO's response rate to Freedom of Information Requests (FOIs) was well above 80 percent on time. In the 3rd Quarter there was a dip in performance due to a number of factors including:

· An upsurge in Subject Access Requests and FOIs relating to Sanctions

· A historical issue with vacancies within the Information Rights Team

· An increase in Internal Reviews from requesters after an FOI was closed

In the final Quarter of 2022-23 the response rate recovered to around 80 percent on time. We continue to work to improve on this.