Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, what instructions have been given to staff in the Law Officers' Departments dealing with freedom of information requests on the application of Freedom of Information Act Awareness Guidance No. 19, issued by the Information Commissioner's Office, in considering whether to apply the exemptions in section 38 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The information which is available on the use of section 38(1)(a) and 38(1)(b) by the Law Officers Departments is contained in the following table.

More detailed figures for the constituent parts of section 38 are not readily available for the remaining Law Officers Departments, as their systems are not designed to provide a more detailed breakdown than is required for published statistics.

Statistics on the use of Freedom of Information exemptions by the Law Officers Departments are published by the Ministry of Justice (Table 10 of annual reports). They are available here https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics.

These statistics provide the number of times section 38 as a whole has been used by each government department.

No guidance has been issued to staff on the application of Freedom of Information Act Awareness Guidance No.19, issued by the Information Commissioner's Office, about the application of section 38 of the Act. However, the Ministry of Justice has published its own guidance on the use of this exemption. This is available here: http://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-guidance-for-practitioners/exemptions-guidance.