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Written question asked by Jim Cunningham (Labour) on Monday, 7 March 2016, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 10 March 2016 (named day). It was answered by Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Conservative) on Thursday, 10 March 2016 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Ministry of Defence: Freedom of Information

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what estimate his Department has made of the number of freedom of information requests (a) granted and (b) refused by his Department in each of the last five years; and what the total cost of processing these applications was in each such year.

Answer

The Government publishes statistics on the operation of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000 within central Government, including details on numbers of requests received. These can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics.

For ease of reference, a summary is provided in the below:

Year

Total resolvable requests

Outcome of FOI request

Granted in Full

Partially Withheld

Fully Withheld

Response Not Yet Provided

2010

2,568

1,628

170

300

470

2011

2,844

1,822

256

648

118

2012

2,667

1,723

244

636

64

2013

2,825

1,822

272

657

74

2014

2,628

1,475

323

724

106

All staff within the Ministry of Defence are responsible for ensuring that the Department as a whole is able to meet its legislative obligations under the FOI Act, and many can be involved in processing FOI requests. The costs in terms of staff time spent on this activity are not recorded and so the total cost cannot be calculated.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
29929
Session
2015-16
Subjects
Freedom of information Ministry of Defence
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk