Department for Business and Trade written question – answered at on 17 April 2026.
Andrew Griffith
Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what proportion of Freedom of Information requests received by his Department were responded to (a) within the statutory 20 working day deadline, (b) between 21 and 40 working days, (c) between 41 and 60 working days, and (d) after 60 working days, in each of the last three calendar years.
Kate Dearden
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Cabinet Office publishes official Freedom of Information (FOI) statistics for all monitored central government bodies, including the Department for Business and Trade, as part of its regular Government FOI Statistics series. These statistics are available on GOV.UK at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics.
FOI statistics for 2023 and 2024 are currently available online through this collection. The 2025 FOI statistics are scheduled to be published in April 2026.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
