Freedom of Information (Time for Compliance with Request) Regulations 2009

I thank noble Lords for their questions, which I shall attempt to address; if I do not pick up every one that has been asked, I will come back in writing. On timeliness, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, is absolutely right to say that 82 per cent of requests were dealt with in time, which obviously leaves 18 per cent that were not. Some of those will be accounted for by the fact that they had exemptions, while some will have been the subject of the issues that I outlined about getting access to appropriate data and people in good time. We believe that 82 per cent is a very good response, but we should not be complacent. We have a number of activities in hand in terms of training and enforcement measures to continue to improve performance. As I have said, we have seen considerable improvements between the very first year and last year. The Information Commissioner can ultimately issue a practice recommendation against an organisation that continues to respond late, which I think addresses one of the issues raised by the noble Lord. With respect to the question about 60 days being a long time, a number of organisations have the ability to have an exemption under this provision. As I mentioned, maintained schools and maintained nursery schools in England and Wales, as well as schools maintained by the Secretary of State for Defence, do not have to count any day that is not a school day, such as school holidays, towards the period of 20 working days within which the request must be answered, provided that the request is answered within 60 working days. I completely agree with the noble Lord that that seems a long time, but an eight-week summer holiday would account for 40 days of that time. If someone asked a question on the very first day of the holiday and the school was closed for 40 days, it would have only 20 working days in which to respond to the freedom of information request. Therefore, the measure probably accommodates all eventualities. As regards other organisations, the National Archives, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the places of deposit appointed under Section 4(1) of the Public Records Act 1958 have up to 30 working days to respond to a request when the information requested is contained in a transferred public records environment. The Information Commissioner can exercise discretion to extend the 20-working-day deadline up to 60 working days in cases where, to respond to a request, information needs to be obtained from an individual who is actively involved in an operation of the Armed Forces or preparations for such an operation. The commissioner can also exercise discretion to extend the 20-working-day deadline up to 60 working days in cases where, to respond to a request, information needs to be obtained from outside the UK. I noted that the noble Lord used the word "promptly". We expect people not to wait until the very last day of the extension to reply but to reply as soon as they can and as promptly as possible. I have several definitions of grant-maintained, integrated, controlled and voluntary schools. It might be easier if I wrote to the noble Lord with that extensive list.