Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The complainant submitted a request to the FCO which sought correspondence sent or received from eight named individuals. The FCO provided some information but withheld the remainder of the information on the basis that it was irrelevant to the request or that it was relevant but exempt from disclosure on the basis of sections 27(1)(a), 27(2), 40(2) and 35(1)(a) of the Act. During the course of the Commissioner’s investigation the FCO accepted that all of the information that it had identified did in fact fall within the scope of the request but considered all the withheld information to be exempt from disclosure on the basis of the exemptions previously cited. The Commissioner has concluded that the information not provided to the complainant by the FCO is in fact exempt from disclosure on the basis of section 27(1)(a) or 40(2).