Absolute Exemption

Section 2 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 sets out the effect of the exemptions in Part II of the Act. Where a provision confers absolute exemption, the public authority's duty to disclose (and, in some cases, its duty even to confirm or deny that it holds the information) does not apply at all — there is no requirement to weigh the public interest in disclosure against the public interest in withholding. This contrasts with qualified exemptions, where information can only be withheld if, in all the circumstances, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

The Act itself specifies exhaustively which provisions of Part II are absolute: these include exemptions for information reasonably accessible to the applicant by other means, information relating to security bodies, court records, parliamentary privilege material, certain personal data, information provided in confidence, and information whose disclosure is prohibited by another enactment or by EU/international obligation. Every other exemption in Part II is qualified, meaning a public authority must still apply the public interest test even where the exempt information falls squarely within the relevant category.