Ministry of Justice
- Date 7 January 2016
- Sector Central government
- Decision(s) FOI 40: Upheld
The complainant requested information about prisoners and IT access at a named prison during a specified time period in 2014. The Ministry of Justice (the ‘MOJ’) provided top line figures but refused to provide any further breakdown on the basis of section 40(2), personal information, as it said identification of individual prisoners would be likely. The Commissioner’s decision is that the MOJ has incorrectly applied the exemption for personal data at section 40(2) of the FOIA as the withheld information is sufficiently anonymised to take it out of the definition of personal data. The Commissioner requires the MOJ to disclose the withheld information.