Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union :

To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, on how many occasions his Department took longer than 30 working days to respond to a freedom of information request in each month since July 2016.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given on 22 March 2017 to the Question 68043. The Cabinet Office publishes FOI statistics on behalf of the whole of the government. FOI statistics do not refer to requests responded to within 30 days as the statutory deadline is 20 days.

FOI statistics are Official Statistics and are governed by the standards set out by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) in their Code of Practice. To publish information outside of the release timetable would be a breach of Protocol 2 of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

The latest Freedom of Information statistics were published in December 2016 and are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/freedom-of-information-statistics-july-to-september-2016--2