Freedom of Information Act - Detailed guidance for staff

• What is a request for information?
• How the Information Compliance Service deals with FOI/EIR requests
• When can we refuse requests?
• When can we exempt material from disclosure?
• What else do I need to know?
• Contacts

What is a request for information?

The House receives thousands of requests for information every year. They may be made by phone, email, and letter, or even face-to-face. The vast majority of these are dealt with as part of our daily work as business as usual (BAU), but some are requested (or need to be dealt with) under the FOI/EIR legislation.

What is a valid FOI request?

• Must be in writing (email, letter, fax)
• Must state the requester’s name and address (an email address is acceptable)
• Must state what information is required. Please note:
  
  • We are permitted to ask for clarification if it is not reasonably clear what the requester wants.
  • We have a responsibility to advise and assist the requester and cannot assume the requester knows what we hold.

FOI or Business as Usual?

BAU requests:

• Can be in any format (telephone, email, letter)
• Ask for routine or easily accessible information
• Are usually answered as part of a team’s day-to-day business

FOI requests:

• Must be made in writing
• Ask for recorded material which may be held by several teams across the House
• Might need to be refused, or the information requested may be fully or partially exempted

What do I do with an FOI request?

Send it to the Information Compliance Service as soon as possible.

How the Information Compliance Service deals with FOI/EIR requests

The following steps describe how the Information Compliance Service deals with a request:

1. Request is received by the Information Compliance Service. It can be sent directly to foicommons@parliament.uk or forwarded from House teams.
2. Request is logged. Information is responsible for prompt compliance, so it is important requests are monitored.
3. Request is acknowledged. We may also need to request clarification from the requester at this point.
4. Information Compliance asks relevant teams for any information they may hold. Teams have seven days to supply any information held and provide draft wording.
5. Information Compliance drafts a response ensuring all the questions are answered and/or applying exemptions in line with our obligations. This is generally circulated for checking and approval to the main FOI contact and/or senior manager.
6. Final agreed response is circulated to relevant parties such as the Media Relations team and/or Office of the Executive for information.
7. Information Compliance sends the response to the requester. The formal response includes details of how to complain.

This process, from start to finish, must take no longer than 20 working days.

When can we refuse requests?

Under some circumstances we can refuse a request for information. To do this, the Information Compliance Service will issue a formal refusal notice. If you believe any of the following circumstances apply to a request, please let the Information Compliance Service know as soon as possible.

The information is not held by the House

The most common reason for refusal. If you think that another House team holds the information, or if it is available from an outside organisation, please let the Information Compliance Service know.

The request is a repeat of a previous request

If we have previously complied with a request from an individual, we are not obliged to comply with another request from that person if it is identical or “substantively similar”. However, if a “reasonable interval” of time has elapsed, we may have to provide the new data. Further guidance from the ICO on dealing with repeat requests is available on their website.

The request is vexatious

If we consider the request is vexatious, we may refuse the request. We have to fully justify this decision to the requester and factors we may consider are:

• A disproportionate burden to the House
• The motive or purpose the requester may have
• The limited value of the information concerned
• An unjustified level of distress or harassment caused to staff

Further guidance from the ICO on dealing with vexatious requests is available on their website.

The request will exceed the time/cost limit

If we consider that the information will take too long to find, we may refuse the request. The limit for the House of Commons is £600 (or 24 working hours). Please note the following points:

• The calculation must be made only on the time taken to determine, locate, retrieve or extract the information. It does not apply to time taken to redact, consult, draft or review the response.
• We need to tell the requester how we made the calculation.
• We need to suggest ways the request could be narrowed to allow the requester access to partial information, if they choose.
• Remember, if we refuse the request for this purpose, the requester could ask us to collate the information up to the maximum 24 hours.

Further guidance from the ICO on refusing requests on the grounds of cost (and time) is available on their website.

When can we exempt material from disclosure?

Although all recorded information held by the House must be considered for disclosure under FOI, we may choose to exempt certain material from disclosure. If you think any of the material you hold is sensitive for the reasons given below, please contact the Information Compliance Service to discuss. Please note this list is not exhaustive, but provides details of the more common exemptions.

The exemptions for EIRs are slightly different (and called ‘exceptions’), so the Information Compliance Service will advise directly if they think these apply.

The information is already available or intended for future publication (s.21 and s.22)

The most common reason for exemption. Please let the Information Compliance Service know if the information is publicly available or if there is an intention to publish in the future.

The information is someone’s personal data (s.40)

Material containing the personal data of identifiable individuals may be exempted to protect their rights under data protection legislation. This is generally decided on a case-by-case basis and will often depend on how much information is already in the public domain. For example, names of senior managers would be unlikely to be protected if their details were already published on our web pages.

Some individuals also choose to disclose their own personal data on public websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, which makes it harder to justify withholding this data for a FOI request. For further information, or questions on this topic, please contact the Information Compliance Service.

Disclosure would affect security (s.24 and s.31)

Any information which would jeopardise national security (s.24) or the ability of security services to perform their roles (s.31) is likely to be exempt. These exemptions require a public interest test (which balances factors in favour of disclosure against factors in favour of withholding the information) to be carried out.

Disclosure would affect commercial interests (s.43)

Any information which would prejudice the commercial interests of the House and/or a third party is likely to be exempt. This exemption requires a public interest test to be carried out.

The information is subject to legal professional privilege or was provided in confidence (s.42 and s.41)

Correspondence with, and information supplied by, legal professionals may be protected by legal professional privilege and therefore likely to be exempt (s.42). This includes staff of the Office of Speaker’s Counsel. Information provided in confidence, for example contractual information, may also be exempt (s.41). Please let the Information Compliance Service know as soon as possible to allow time for consultation.

The information is subject to parliamentary privilege (s.34)

Material held by some teams (most commonly Select Committees) may be protected by parliamentary privilege. The application of this exemption requires consultation with the Clerk of the Journals and, if an appeal is made, a certificate from the Speaker of the House.

Disclosure of the information would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs (s.36)

This exemption exists to protect the right of a public authority to discuss matters freely and frankly, without worry that records of these discussions will be released. The application of this exemption requires the Speaker of the House of Commons to confirm that it is his ‘reasonable opinion’, and, if an appeal is made, he must also issue a certificate confirming this.

Further guidance from the ICO on exempting information from disclosure is available on their website. Similar guidance in the case of the EIRs is also available.

What else do I need to know?

Advice and assistance

Under the legislation, we have a duty to provide advice and assistance to the requester. We cannot expect the applicant to have an in-depth knowledge of the House’s information holdings or filing systems so we must take a ‘reasonable’ approach to interpreting and answering requests. For example, if a requester asked for “estimated costs for the works to improve the Palace of Westminster”, it might be reasonable to interpret the request to be for costs relating to the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Programme.

In another example, if a requester states that he or she has a disability and cannot supply the request in writing we could offer to take a note of the application over the telephone and then read back the note to confirm that we have correctly recorded the request.

We are not obliged to create any information under FOIA, but we are obliged to assist the requester to understand what information is held, in order for them to make a decision about whether an alternative meets his or her requirements.

Consultation

In some cases a third party may need to be consulted before disclosure, for example, where their legal rights are affected; or where we believe they may be able to assist in determining whether an exemption applies.

Depending on the third party and the nature of the material, this consultation may be carried out by the House team or by the Information Compliance Service; please contact the Information Compliance Service to discuss. Please note that the clock does not stop even when we have to consult a third party, so the sooner this is identified, the better.

Members of Parliament

Members of Parliament are not public authorities for the purposes of FOI and EIR. This means that they are not obliged to respond to requests made to them under these Acts. Similarly, the Act does not apply to political parties.

However, information held by a public authority which relates to a Member is subject to disclosure under the legislation. This may include material such as complaints a Member has made about a public authority’s services, correspondence a Member has sent to a public authority on constituency business, or even Member-related information held by the House, such as costs of foreign language training or catering debts.

If we are considering disclosing information relating to a Member we must notify them of our intent in advance. Please contact the Information Compliance Service to discuss if this is the case.

Protective Marking

The mandatory Parliamentary Protective Marking Scheme requires staff to demonstrate a duty of care to parliamentary information and handle it in accordance with information security guidance. The purpose of the Scheme is to mark information which requires additional protection in order to prevent loss, theft, tampering or unauthorised disclosure, which could cause harm to Parliament. Government departments also have a protective marking scheme.

However, please note that the presence of protective marking indicators on a document does not automatically prevent it being considered for disclosure, although it may provide a hint that it might contain sensitive material which should be exempted.

Contacts

The Information Compliance Service

For all queries or concerns relating to the House of Commons and the Digital Service:

• By telephone: 020 7219 2559
• By email: foicommons@parliament.uk

The Clerk of Journals

For queries relating to privileged information and the application of the s.34 exemption:

• By telephone: 020 7219 3315

The Information Commissioner’s Office

For general queries relating to information rights legislation:

• By telephone: 0303 123 1113
• ICO website

House of Commons Information Compliance

Last reviewed October 2023