Information Commissioner's Office

Department for Constitutional Affairs

27 March 2007, Central government

The complainant requested information on the number and rank of judges and magistrates who had been disciplined for misuse of departmental computer systems, including those who had been found to use the internet to view pornography. The public authority initially admitted that it held the information but refused to provide it citing the exemption in section 36. In a later development, the public authority informed the complainant that it would ‘neither confirm nor deny’ that it held the information requested and applied the exemptions in sections 31 and 36 of the Act. The Commissioner’s decision is that the public authority breached section 17 of the Act, and that it has also incorrectly applied sections 31 and 36 of the Act. Consequently and in the particular circumstances of this complaint, the DCA should confirm whether or not it holds the information requested by the complainant.

FOI 17: Upheld