Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Freedom of Information

(asked on 2nd July 2015) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, on how many occasions his 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
David Lidington Portrait
David Lidington
This question was answered on 9th July 2015

In the last five years the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has used Section 38 in a total of 94 cases. In 42 cases both sections 38 (1) (a) and (1) (b) were used simultaneously. Section 38 (1) (a) was used in a further nine cases and Section 38 (1) (b) was used in a further 43 cases. The following table provides a breakdown by year:

Both38(1)(a)38(1)(b)
2014862
2013904
201210112
201111216
2010409

In all Freedom of Information (FOI) cases handled by the FCO dedicated FOI case managers provide advice to Desk Officers on the correct application of exemptions. To do this case managers draw on Information Commissioner's Office guidance notes, including Freedom of Information Act Awareness Guidance No19, as well as Freedom of Information Guidance for Practioners provided by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and available publicly on the MOJ web-site (https://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-guidance-for-practitioners).

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