Information Commissioner's Office

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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Information Commissioner's Office >> Home Office (Central government) [2023] UKICO 185253 (13 June 2023)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKICO/2023/185253.html
Cite as: [2023] UKICO 185253

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Home Office

The complainant requested information on a third party supplier used to conduct asylum interviews. The Home Office refused to provide any of the information requested and applied a number of exemptions to various parts of the request, namely section 31(1)(e) – the operation of immigration controls, section 40(2) – personal information, section 43(2) – commercial interests and section 44 – prohibitions on disclosure. The Commissioner’s decision is that the Home Office was correct to rely on section 31(1)(e) of FOIA for all the information withheld under this exemption. He finds that section 43(2) of FOIA has been correctly applied to the respective parts of the withheld information with one exception, (namely, the dates for the ‘proof of concept’ phase as detailed in the step below). He does not agree that either section 40(2) or section 44(1)(a) of FOIA are engaged at all. The Commissioner requires the Home Office to take the following steps within 35 calendar days of this notice to ensure compliance with the legislation: • Disclose the withheld information held for part 2 of the request (ie the dates for the ‘proof of concept’ phase. • Disclose the withheld information for parts 3a and 3c of the request (ie the numbers of testing interviews broken down by nationality and outcome).

FOI 31: Complaint not upheld FOI 43: Complaint partly upheld FOI 40: Complaint upheld FOI 44: Complaint upheld

Decision notice: 185253