Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many freedom of information requests the Constitution Group has received each year since 2015; and what proportion of such requests were (a) granted in full, (b) are still outstanding, (c) partially withheld and (d) fully withheld.

This question was answered on 10th October 2018

The number of FOI requests received by Constitution Group since 2015, broken down by year, are as follows:

2015: 32

2016: 20

2017: 41

2018 (first quarter): 14

Cabinet Office records the outcome of cases, including the nature of the response and the statutory exemptions used, at the departmental level and these Cabinet Office statistics are published quarterly as part of the wider FOI performance of central government. In order to provide the level of detail requested for just Constitution Group, the Cabinet Office would need to review each individual request and this would exceed the threshold of cost and time. The Cabinet Office’s publishing of statistics on the operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, including the outcome of cases, can be found at the following weblink: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics.