Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC)

The complainant requested information from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) about the UK-US pharmaceutical trade arrangement. DHSC’s final position is that the information is exempt from disclosure under sections 21(1), 27(1), 29(1), 35(1) and 43(2) of FOIA. These exemptions concern information accessible to the applicant by other means, international relations, the economy, the formulation of government policy and commercial interests, respectively. The Commissioner’s decision is that the identified information that falls within scope of the request engages section 35(1)(a) of FOIA and the public interest favours maintaining this exemption. The Commissioner does not require further steps.