Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, on how many occasions his 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.

Statistics on the use of Freedom of Information exemptions are published by the Ministry of Justice on a quarterly and annual basis. They are available via the following link and include up to the first quarter of 2015:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics

These statistics provide the number of times section 38 as a whole has been used across all monitored bodies. The table below outlines the number of times s.38 has been used broken down by subsection. Figures for 2010 show only the total number of times s.38 has been used as the records themselves have been destroyed in line with the Department’s record retention policy:

* records are no longer held for 2010.