Ministry of Justice

The complainant has requested a copy of a file relating to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the Isle of Man, in 1972. After initially maintaining that it did not hold the requested information, the MoJ revised its position and confirmed that, at the time of the request, it did hold the file. It said that ‘open’ parts of the file had since been transferred to the National Archives (‘TNA’) and therefore, at the time of the request, that information would have been exempt from disclosure under section 22 (Information intended for future publication) of FOIA. As regards the ‘closed’ information, the MoJ refused to disclose this, citing sections 37(1)(a) (Communications with the Sovereign) and 41 (Information provided in confidence) of FOIA. The Commissioner’s decision is that, at the time of the request, the MoJ was entitled to rely on section 22 to refuse to disclose the ‘open’ information. The MoJ was also entitled to rely on section 37(1)(a) of FOIA to withhold the ‘closed’ information. However, it breached section 1(1)(a) by failing to confirm to the complainant that it held the requested information within the statutory time for compliance. The Commissioner requires no steps as a result of this decision.