According to new figures for 2025 released by the Cabinet Office, Whitehall departments are becoming more secretive year-on-year. The right to Freedom of Information is under threat from Labour…
Cost limit refusals are up 45%. The government wants to reduce cost limits (already not protected from inflation) to block even more FOIs…
The core government departments are generally withholding the most information. Section 35 (government policy) exemption usage also rose by a whopping 46%. They don’t want you to know what they are planning…
Guido’s Right to Know campaign to save Freedom of Information allows co-conspirators to submit what they want to know with us for targeted requests at government departments. FOI is crucial and the public will not be bullied out of using it…
Head to the righttoknow.uk website. Ask the questions you want answering…
Freedom of Information statistics, 2024 vs 2025 — Cabinet Office, 29 April 2026
|
17/21
Depts withholding
more than last year |
+45%
Cost limit
refusals |
+46%
S.35 policy
exemptions |
| Department | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| HM Treasury | 51.7% | 67.9% | +16.2pp |
| DSIT | 31.7% | 47.3% | +15.6pp |
| DCMS | 41.1% | 50.7% | +9.6pp |
| Cabinet Office | 49.8% | 58.9% | +9.1pp |
| DEFRA | 51.4% | 57.5% | +6.1pp |
| FCDO | 42.8% | 48.7% | +5.9pp |
| Home Office | 40.5% | 45.2% | +4.8pp |
| MoD | 35.2% | 40.0% | +4.7pp |
| DHSC | 24.6% | 28.6% | +4.1pp |
| DfT | 25.0% | 28.9% | +3.9pp |
| DfE | 27.2% | 30.7% | +3.5pp |
| DWP | 50.9% | 53.6% | +2.7pp |
| DESNZ | 32.5% | 35.0% | +2.5pp |
| DBT | 38.0% | 39.8% | +1.8pp |
| MoJ | 40.7% | 42.4% | +1.7pp |
| Department | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Office | 1,071 | 1,686 | +615 |
| HM Treasury | 296 | 720 | +424 (+143%) |
| DWP | 594 | 932 | +338 |
| DSIT | 46 | 244 | +198 (+430%) |
| Cabinet Office | 278 | 436 | +158 |
| FCDO | 313 | 470 | +157 |
| Department | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| DSIT | 33 | 143 | +110 (+333%) |
| Home Office | 109 | 195 | +86 |
| MHCLG | 79 | 136 | +57 |
| DfE | 57 | 104 | +47 |
| DBT | 52 | 95 | +43 |
| FCDO | 30 | 66 | +36 |
Labour is considering lowering the cost ceiling for processing Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, using ‘spiralling administrative costs’ as the latest excuse to limit government transparency. Obviously blaming China wasn’t good enough…
According to briefings in the FT:
“The soaring number of requests comes against a backdrop of heavily constrained Whitehall budgets… the cost threshold for complying with a request is set at £600 for central government and £450 for other public bodies, with staff time charged at a flat rate of £25 an hour. This equates to 24 hours of work, or 3.5 working days, for Whitehall departments and 18 hours of work for other government agencies.”
Lowering the cost ceiling would effectively let departments turn down what they claim would be more complex or time-consuming requests without having to find a specific exemption. In reality, it would inevitably be a useful way to bury inconvenient and embarrassing material from the public. This is a government which makes the hilarious claim it has “strengthened many transparency and disclosure standards“. Total nonsense…
In the FT this morning:
“British officials are concerned that China is exploiting the UK’s freedom of information [FoI] legislation to collate unclassified data that risks revealing sensitive information. Government figures believe they have detected a pattern of requests relating to the UK’s defence and national security, raising suspicions that Beijing may be behind a significant proportion of them, according to people familiar with the matter.”
It is in Labour’s interest to limit FoI responses because they are routinely embarrassing. Guido sends hundreds, and will continue to do so. The idea that China is using them for espionage is laughable…
On 3 February Bridget Phillipson held a meeting with headmistress extraordinaire and anti-woke warrior Katharine Birbalsingh. Part of an ill-fated charm offensive with key academy figures…
Birbalsingh’s account of the meeting was scathing – she accused Phillipson of being driven by a “Marxist ideological dislike of academies” and lacking a basic knowledge of facts. Before too long a Bridget-sympathetic narrative managed to appear in the press via Freedom of Information request. Only nine days after the meeting itself was held – a miracle in government transparency and a new standard for all meeting FoIs…
Schools Week’s alternative account from the provided transcripts of the meeting went like this: “Bridget Phillipson had to ask headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh to ‘lower her tone’ and ‘allow her to finish her sentences.'” Where Birbalsingh says “You do not seem to understand your own bill” the transcript’s account is: “The SoS said that the explanatory notes on all of the Bill measures are available online and provide more detail.” You get the picture…
Seeing as DfE is so keen on getting meeting transcripts into the hands of journalists via FoI Guido put one in for minutes of meetings held with the head of the National Education Union. Ten working days later – crickets. Not so keen on releasing those?
Stories occasionally pop up about pest problems in creaking civil service HQ buildings in London. Marsham Street’s Defra/Home Office building had a particularly tough case of bed bugs last year…
A Freedom of Information request fired out by Guido has confirmed that over at the DWP’s headquarters on Caxton Street the pest controllers have been called out a whopping 24 times in 12 months. There is a 50/50 split between preventative and reactive callouts. Civil servants must know the pest controllers by name – they show up every two weeks…
The DWP is refusing to release the cost of pest control operations “to protect the ability of a public authority like DWP to obtain goods or services on the best possible commercial terms and to protect the legitimate commercial interests of its suppliers.” Is that in case someone offered to do it for less?
The Civil Service is no stranger to absent-mindedly misplacing thousands of pounds worth of equipment. They can’t help themselves…
Guido has been firing Freedom of Information requests around Whitehall to analyse just how much taxpayer-funded kit is going missing from departments. The Department for Education has managed to lose a whopping 72 pieces of kit since April alone. Despite only 69% of them bothering to turn up to the office from July to September…
31 laptops and 41 phones have been lost or stolen in the months of April to October with a total value of £8,262.01. October was the worst for both phones and laptop misplacements with 8 and 9 lost respectively – the figures have risen overall since Labour came to power. Curiously the cost of replacing all this tech is significantly higher than the original equipment at a whopping £39,641.66. Quite some upgrades…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”