Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many disciplinary cases were concluded against civil servants in (a) her Department and (b) its agencies by (i) outcome and (ii) whether the primary allegation related to (A) performance and (B) conduct in the last twelve months.

HMT don’t hold the information for disciplinary cases in agencies. Where there is an issue in staff performance, HMT have a managing poor performance policy to manage any concerns. Our disciplinary policy covers issues with conduct.

In the last twelve months, there have been six disciplinary cases concluded against civil servants. We consider that providing an exact breakdown of outcome would constitute the disclosure of personal data. This is because section 40(2) of the FOI Act, by virtue of section 40(3A) provides an absolute exemption for third party personal data, where disclosure would contravene any of the data protection principles set out in Article 5 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). The first data protection principle requires the disclosure of third-party personal data to be lawful, fair and transparent. We believe that releasing the information would breach the first data protection principle, since it would be unlawful and unfair to release the information.