Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will respond to the freedom of information request, made by Marie Lyon, Chair of the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests on 13 November 2019, seeking access to data held by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency before 27 February 2020; and if not, why not.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency aims to reply to all freedom of information requests within the 20 working-day statutory deadline set out in the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In circumstances where we need to consider whether the public interest in releasing the information is outweighed by the public interest in not giving the information (the ‘public interest test’) the Act allows us to extend the deadline for reply beyond the usual 20 working days. This was applied to Mrs Lyon’s request and we responded by the revised deadline of 13 January.