Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what powers they have under Freedom of Information legislation to check, in the process of responding to an FOI request, a minister's private email address to see whether they have used it for government business.

The Government’s position on the operation of Freedom of Information legislation in respect of private email accounts is set out in the ‘Guidance to departments on use of private emails,’ published in 2013 as outlined below:

‘The Freedom of Information Act and searches for information

9. The FoI Act allows people to request information; it does not give the requestor any power to dictate where the department should search for that information. It is for the department to consider where the information might be and to take reasonable steps to find it. As set out above, it is expected that Government business should be recorded on government record systems. It will generally be reasonable to search only within those systems when a request has been received.

10. Departmental searches in response to requests for information are the responsibility of individual departments. The FOI Act itself provides no express legal authority for departments to search another person’s private emails or other records for the purpose of responding to a request made under that Act. In exceptional circumstances, it may be necessary to ascertain whether there is Government information in an individual’s possession that is not accessible to Government. This should be done by approaching the individual in question and the department should be entitled to rely on that person’s answer. There would be no requirement on the department to inform the requestor that the question had been asked, or (if Government information had been privately stored) where any information was found though, as now, if the Information Commissioner’s office is involved, departments may be asked to explain the nature and extent of the searches conducted in order to reply to a request.’