Website of the Department of Health

Response

Thank you for your letter seeking a review of the Department’s decision to withhold information requested by you under the Freedom of Information Act.

The information you requested was: -

1. The number of under 18-year-olds who have had a) two or more abortions b) three or more abortions c) four or more abortions d) five or more abortions, broken down by Primary Care Trust for the last three years.

In line with your request a review of the Department’s decision has now been completed and it has decided that the original decision to withhold the information is upheld, although some information has now been released which you may find useful.

As DH’s original reply stated, under the Abortion Regulations 1991, data can only lawfully be disclosed if it is sufficiently abstract from the information sent to the CMO, as set out in the regulations.

Data will not be sufficiently abstract where the numbers of cases involved are small and/or where there is a risk of identification of the individuals involved by virtue of the fact that the information disclosed could be put together with other information which is, or may become, available.

We made our decision after considering, and in line with, the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) guidance on the disclosure of abortion statistics (2005)

ONS considered the issues carefully before preparing the guidance and coming to the conclusion that certain levels of data should be suppressed. You state that there are thousands of women aged under 18 in each PCT and that as such, these women could not be identified. The ONS guidance lists various scenarios which demonstrates that identification is potentially possible. As we have said above, we have to consider that there might be information available that when added to our data then risks breaching an individual’s confidentiality. 

Therefore, we remain of the view that disclosure of the information requested could breach an individual’s confidentiality and, in turn, breach the Regulations and the Data Protection Act 1998. The exemptions in Sections 40(2) and 40(3)(a)(i) and 44 (1)(a) of the FOIA apply and as we said, these are absolute exemptions.  This means that we are not required to consider whether the public interest would best be served by disclosure of the information. 

After reviewing your request though, we are of the opinion that we could give a breakdown of the data by PCT for those women who had abortions in 2003, 2004, 2005 and who had had one previous abortion. The table is attached but you will see that the majority of the entries have been suppressed. Again, this table has been prepared in line with the ONS guidance.   

• Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) guidance on the disclosure of abortion statistics (2005) (opens new window)
• Download Table giving a breakdown of the data by PCT for those women who had abortions in 2003, 2004, 2005 and who had had one previous abortion (XLS, 160K)