§ Dr. David ClarkTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many applications for information he received under the Open Government: Code of Practice on Access to Government Information in the last parliamentary session; and how many were granted. [121854]
§ Mr. StrawThe annual Monitoring Report on the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information contains information regarding the operation of the Code during the calendar year, including statistics on the number of requests received under the Code. These statistics are broken down by Department. (Government 219W Departments all submit returns for inclusion in the report.) The statistics relate to the calendar year: it is not possible to break these down into parliamentary sessions.
The 1998 Monitoring Report was published in July 1999 and contains statistics for that calendar year. The total number of requests received in 1998 was 23,754, of which a total of 22,009 were granted. The breakdown of these requests into individual departments is contained in Appendix 1. Copies of the 1998 report are in the Library. I hope to be able to publish the 1999 Monitoring Report on the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information shortly.