Information Commissioner's Office

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

12 December 2017, Central government

The complainant submitted a request to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) seeking the names of the individuals who received five particular diplomatic telegrams ‘diptels’. The FCO initially refused to comply with this request on the basis of section 14(1) (vexatious) because it considered that the process of doing so would be excessively burdensome. However, the FCO amended this position during the course of the Commissioner’s investigation and suggested that it could be argued that it did not in fact hold the requested information. The Commissioner has concluded that the requested information is not in fact held and that the FCO should have informed the complainant of this when it initially responded to his request. Its failure to do so represents a breach of section 1(1)(a) of FOIA. The complainant also argued that the FCO had failed to respond to all aspects of an earlier related request he had submitted to it. The Commissioner agrees that the FCO did not respond to all aspects of this request, and in doing so breached section 1(1)(a) of FOIA, but the information in question has, in effect, been provided to the complainant during the course of the Commissioner’s investigation. Therefore, no steps are required by the FCO in response to this decision notice in order to fulfil this request.

FOI 1: Partly upheld