Department for Work and Pensions

The complainant has requested a copy of the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP’s) business case for the universal credit programme. The DWP refused to provide this information on the basis of section 36(2)(b) and (c). The Commissioner’s decision is that the DWP correctly engaged the exemption and after considering the public interest arguments the DWP were correct to withhold the business case and a number of the annexes. The Commissioner found that the exemptions were not correctly applied to annexes I and L. The Commissioner requires the public authority to disclose annexes I and L.