§ Mr. WigginTo ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department on what grounds a freedom of information request can he denied by the Government; and how many of these requests have been denied in the last five years, broken down by reason for denial. [70886]
§ Yvette CooperThe right of access to information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 will come into force on 1 January 2005. Until that date, requests for Government information will be dealt with in accordance with the non-statutory Code of Practice on Access to Government Information. Under the code, the approach to release of information should in all cases be based on the assumption that information should be released except where disclosure would not be in the public interest, as specified in Part II of the code. Part II of the code sets out categories of information that are exempt from the commitments to provide information under the code. These exemptions are listed in table 2.
Table 1 gives details of the numbers of requests under the code that were received and the number of code requests refused in the last five years for all of the bodies covered by the code. We do not have records of the reason for denial for each of the requests refused. However, if an applicant is dissatisfied with the response to their request they can ask the Department to review that decision internally. Table 2 sets out the number of times each exemption has been cited at this stage in the review process for the last five years. Monitoring reports on the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information are published annually and copies are available in the House Library.
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Annex A Table 1: Number of requests received and refused under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information Year Number of requests received Number of requests refused 20011 4,668 797 2000 5,969 1,072 1999 4,863 1,398 1998 23,754 1,745 1997 3,772 1,894 1 The code monitoring report for 2001 has not yet been published.
Table 2: Number of exemptions cited at internal review of code of practice requests Number of times cited in Code exemption 20011 2000 1999 1998 1997 1994–2001 1) Defence, security and international relations 4 5 4 3 0 21 2) Internal discussion and advice 18 11 10 7 11 72 3) Communication with the royal household 1 0 0 0 1 2 4) Law enforcement and legal proceedings 12 11 8 8 9 58 5) Immigration and nationality 0 6 0 2 0 9 6) Effective management of the economy and collection of tax 2 1 1 0 4 8 7) Effective management and operations of the public service 1 1 1 1 2 17 8) Public employment, public appointments and honours 0 3 4 1 3 14 9) Voluminous or vexatious requests 4 6 6 6 10 40 10) Publication and prematurity in relation to publication 3 3 4 0 3 13 11) Research, statistics and analysis 1 0 1 0 0 2 12) Privacy of an individual 6 9 3 5 2 30 13) Third party's commercial confidence 2 1 2 5 3 22 14) Information given in confidence 6 3 0 2 3 23 15) Statutory and other restrictions 7 2 0 0 2 13 1 The code monitoring report for 2001 has not yet been published.