FOI2024-00007: Government planning for extra-terrestrial life
Response to a freedom of information (FOI) request for information held about how the government would coordinate the announcement of a discovery of extra-terrestrial life.
Documents
Details
| Reference number | FOI2024-00007 |
|---|---|
| Date of request | 29 June 2024 |
| Date of response | 4 July 2024 |
| Outcome | Information not held |
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (the department) received the following request for information which we responded to under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA):
Thank you for your letter of 26th June about my Freedom of Information Act request in which I asked for information about which other Government departments and agencies are involved in the development of the policy on the question of how Government would handle the announcement of “the discovery of life beyond Earth”.
I can see that you have applied Section 35(1)(a) of the Act to my request. As you know, this covers information relating to the formulation or development of government policy. I have also read the ICO’s guidance on the application of Section 35, paragraph 22 of which states:
Departments can only withhold the information if the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
I was therefore pleased to see in your response the statement:
We have concluded that the public interest lies in favour of disclosing the information.
The arguments that you have included in Annex A to justify this determination are a matter for you. The determination is the main part of the letter; the arguments in the Annex are ancillary. I note, though, that those arguments are not the ones that I would have used. Rather, I would refer to the question from Stephen Metcalfe MP and the answer given by Secretary of State Michele Donelan MP at the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee on 13th December 2023. Mr Donelan asked whether the Government had a plan about how “the existence of extraterrestrial life” would be shared with the public. Ms Donelan stated:
…The communication plan would depend on the exact specifics of the hypothetical that we are talking about and how it would play out, and would also be a cross-Government undertaking with particular Cabinet Office involvement.” [Q76 - see https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14006/pdf/]
The point being that I think the main reason why you have decided that you cannot withhold the information I requested under Section 35(1)(a) is that your Secretary of State shared information on exactly the same topic and exactly the same nature as my request. Specifically she has shared the name of another Government Department involved in the development of this policy - that is, the Cabinet Office. If it was really deleterious to the development of policy to name other departments involved then I am sure that your Secretary of State would not have done so. Since she has, all my request was doing was to ask for the list to be expanded to cover all the departments involved. We are particularly interested to see whether the Department of Health and Social Care is on that list, as we think it should be.
However, it appears as though I do not need to argue this point as you recognise that the Department holds some of the information requested and YOUR DETERMINATION is that it is in the public interest for that information to be disclosed. Would I be wrong in either logic or substance if I asked you, kindly, now to disclose it please?