Department for Work and Pensions: Freedom of Information

(asked on 2nd July 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, 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.


Answered by
Justin Tomlinson Portrait
Justin Tomlinson
This question was answered on 9th July 2015

Statistics on the use of Freedom of Information exemptions are published by the Ministry of Justice (Table 10 of annual reports). They are available here https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics.

These statistics provide the number of times section 38 as a whole has been used by each government department including DWP. More detailed figures for the constituent parts of section 38 are not readily available because our systems are not designed to provide a more detailed breakdown than is required for the published statistics.

No guidance has been issued to staff on the application of Freedom of Information Act Awareness Guidance No.19, issued by the Information Commissioner's Office, about the application of section 38 of the Act. However, the Ministry of Justice has published its own guidance on the use of this exemption. This is available here: http://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-guidance-for-practitioners/exemptions-guidance.

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