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Written question asked by Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat) on Tuesday, 23 February 2010, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 25 February 2010. It was answered by Lord Beamish (Labour) on Thursday, 25 March 2010 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Departmental Freedom of Information

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many requests for information as defined by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 were received by his Department in 2009; and how many of those requests (a) received a full response within 40 working days and (b) remain outstanding.
Answer

Statistics on requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 are published by the Ministry of Justice. Statistics for the quarter 1 October to 31 December 2009, and annual statistics for 2009, will be published by the Ministry of Justice on 29 April 2010. Releasing these statistics before this date would contravene the provisions of the Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order which came into effect on 1 December 2008.Statistics for the first three quarters of 2009 have been published by the Ministry of Justice, and relevant extracts are shown in the table. Information is collected on the number of requests which receive a response within the statutory response time of 20 working days, those which receive a response within permitted extensions to this period ("in time"), and those which have not been answered at the time of reporting to the Ministry of Justice. Information on the number of responses sent within 40 working days is not collected and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

2009
Period Requests received Full response sent within 20 working days Full response sent "in time" Response outstanding at time of reporting
January to March 758 477 27 133
April to June 670 428 31 137
July to September 766 307 70 306

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
508 c416W; 319186
Session
2009-10
Subjects
Freedom of information Ministry of Defence
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk