Information Commissioner's Office

Cabinet Office

30 July 2007, Central government

The complainant asked the Cabinet Office for minutes, correspondence and any other information about meetings between the Multinational Chairman’s Group and the Prime Minister and his officials. The Cabinet Office provided some of the information but withheld the rest as exempt under sections 35(1)(a) and 36 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (‘the Act’). The Commissioner decided that the Cabinet Office breached section 17(1) of the Act, in that it failed to explain adequately which exemption applied to each element of the requested information and why. The Cabinet Office also breached section 17(3) as its refusal notice failed to deal adequately with the reasons for claiming that the public interest in maintaining the exemption under section 35(1)(a) outweighed the public interest in disclosing the requested information. The Commissioner decided that all of the information is exempt under section 35(1)(a) but, in breach of section 1(1), the Cabinet Office failed to disclose some of this information where the public interest in disclosure was not outweighed by the public interest in maintaining the exemption under section 35(1)(a) of the Act. The Commissioner requires that the Cabinet Office disclose this information.

FOI 17: Upheld