FOI release

Response: Sarah Munby's attendance at the Franco-British Colloque

Published 8 October 2024

Reference number	FOI2024-00379
Date of request	11 September 2024
Date of response	8 October 2024
Outcome	Information partially disclosed

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):

I would like to have details of Sarah Munby’s attendance at the Franco British Colloque, January 2024. This is recorded in the “Senior Officials Hospitality” release as follows

Sarah Munby:2024-01-25:Franco-British Colloque:Hotel - 2 night stay at Trianon Palace

For context, the Sarah Munby is clearly attending the Colloque in her official capacity (as is shown by the release, and the attached attendance list prepared by the 2023 Colloque, which lists her under her official title “Permanent Secretary, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy” ).

For further context, the Colloque is co-chaired by Pierre-André de Chalendar, Chair of St Gobain (a company implicated in the Grenfell fire), and it is funded by St Gobain, along with other companies including Air Liquide, Ardiam, BNP Paribas, Egis, Engie, Euronext, Groupe ADP, International SOS, Lazard Freres, Orange, Rothschild & Co, Safran, TotalEnergies, Veolia and Vivendi.

In effect the Colloque is a business-funded meeting where the Permanent Secretary has met with many corporate executives. I would like to get more information including the names of those attending the Colloque.

I would assume there is a letter or email sent to Sarah Munby giving a timetable of the event, the names of those attending , and similar details – I would like to see documents of this nature

Our response

We can confirm that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (the department) does hold the information in scope of your request, including a pre-programme document (Annex A) and a travel letter (Annex B). We are withholding the list of participants under section 40(2) of the FOIA.

Section 40(2): Personal data of third parties

Some of the information you have requested is exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) because of the condition at section 40(3A) of the FOIA.

Section 40(2) and (40(3A) state:

(2) Any information to which a request for information relates is also exempt information if-

(a) it constitutes personal data which does not fall within subsection (1), and

(b) the first, second or third condition below is satisfied.

(3A) The first condition is that the disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act-

(a) would contravene any of the data protection principles, or

(b) would do so if the exemptions in section 24(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018 (manual unstructured data held by public authorities) were disregarded.

The department has obligations under data protection legislation, and in law generally, to protect personal data. This exempts personal data from release if disclosure would contravene any of the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation and section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. Release would breach the first data protection principle since it would be unlawful and unfair to disclose the information.

As section 40 is an absolute exemption, the department is not required to carry out a public interest test. However, given that this personal information is processed under Article 6(1)(f) (legitimate interests), we are required to complete a legitimate interest assessment. Please find this enclosed in Annex C.