Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much his Department spent on legal fees in cases relating to the release of information requested under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in each of the last five years.

It has not been possible to verify and disaggregate the legal fee spend into each individual year. To do so would require an analysis of each individual file and electronic records and analysing the work undertaken during each year and the costs raised against this work. Verifying and disaggregating the data in this manner would take the costs of responding to the question over the disproportionate cost threshold.