The Ministry of Defence has successfully defended a freedom of information appeal brought by a former RAF serviceman who sought disclosure of investigators' material and unused evidence from a court martial case in which he pleaded guilty to six charges of misapplication of service property.
In Ian Adams v Information Commissioner & Ministry of Defence [2026] UKFTT 00847 (GRC), the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) dismissed the appeal on 9 June 2026, finding that the disputed material was exempt from disclosure under either the absolute exemption for a requester's own personal data at section 40(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 or the qualified exemption for criminal investigations and proceedings at section 30(1)(a)–(c), with the public interest balance favouring non-disclosure in the latter category.
Ian Adams was investigated by the Royal Air Force Police from November 2019 over allegations of fraud. The charges were subsequently varied to six counts of misapplication of service property under the Armed Forces Act 2006. He pleaded guilty at court martial in November 2020, with sentencing in December of that year.
Adams has consistently maintained that the Service Prosecuting Authority withheld unused material during the court martial process, and that his guilty plea was entered without sight of evidence to which he was entitled. He has characterised the handling of disclosure by the SPA and RAFP as constituting a miscarriage of justice.
In February 2024 he submitted a FOIA request to the MoD seeking full disclosure of all investigators' material from the investigation and all unused material that had allegedly been withheld during the legal proceedings. The MoD confirmed it held the information but refused disclosure under section 30(1)(a)–(c) FOIA, adding section 40(2) following an internal review in October 2024.
The Information Commissioner upheld the refusal in a Decision Notice of 24 March 2025 (IC-341244-T5F7), concluding that section 30(1)(a)–(c) was engaged and that the public interest favoured maintaining the exemption. The ICO also noted that section 40(1) applied to at least some of the withheld material. Adams appealed to the Tribunal.
A significant portion of the appeal turned on the application of section 40(1) FOIA, which provides an absolute exemption for information that constitutes the requester's own personal data.
The Tribunal, sitting as Judge Heald with Members Matthews and Taylor, reviewed the withheld material in a closed bundle. The file included witness statements, investigators' notes, victim and witness needs proformas, a statement plan, RAFP email correspondence, copies of documents gathered during the investigation, and an investigation management diary. Much of the material named Adams directly and had been generated specifically in connection with the allegations made against him.
The Tribunal was satisfied that the bulk of the material constituted Adams's personal data as defined by section 3(2) of the Data Protection Act 2018, and was therefore exempt under the absolute exemption. It rejected Adams's argument that material relating to him personally should, on that basis, be released to him. A FOIA disclosure is made to the world at large, not to the individual requester, and section 40(1) blocks disclosure on precisely that ground regardless of who is asking.
The Tribunal did not, however, accept that every page in the file qualified as the appellant's personal data. Some material was insufficiently closely related to him despite being held on his file. That residual material fell to be assessed under section 30(1).
The Tribunal had no difficulty concluding that section 30(1)(a)–(c) was engaged in respect of the remaining material. All of it had been received, collated and held by the MoD - through the RAFP and SPA - for the purposes of investigating whether Adams should be charged and for the subsequent court martial proceedings. The "at any time" wording in section 30(1) means the exemption continues to protect material even after proceedings have concluded.
On the public interest balance, the Tribunal acknowledged that the general interest in openness and transparency carried some weight in favour of disclosure. It also gave limited weight to the time elapsed since the court martial ended. But a series of countervailing factors proved decisive.
The Tribunal found that the primary interest being advanced was Adams's private interest in challenging what he believed to be a miscarriage of justice, rather than any public interest, FOIA being both motive-blind and requester-blind. It noted that Adams had been legally represented throughout by Willow Chapman, a specialist military law firm, and had possessed rights of appeal within the court martial process which he did not exercise.
More broadly, the panel accepted that disclosure to the world at large (as distinct from targeted disclosure under criminal procedure rules) carried a real risk of deterring future witnesses and others from cooperating with RAFP investigations. It also gave weight to the principle of finality in litigation and the importance of preserving the military justice system as the proper forum for determining guilt.
The panel declined to find that redaction could change the outcome. Redacting material that constituted the appellant's personal data would not alter its character under section 40(1), and no form of redaction would change the section 30 analysis or the public interest balance.
The Tribunal was careful to note the limits of its own jurisdiction. It had no role in determining whether Adams had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice, and it made no such finding. For balance, it recorded the MoD's position that there was no evidence of unlawful non-disclosure: that Adams's legal representatives had received a list of unused material from the SPA, that the guilty plea had been offered by Willow Chapman conditional on specified disclosure which was provided, and that no challenge to the SPA's conduct had been raised at the time and no appeal had followed.
The Tribunal found the ICO's Decision Notice to be partially but not fully in accordance with the law. The ICO had applied section 30(1) to all disputed material, whereas the Tribunal found section 40(1) applied to the majority and section 30(1) to the remainder. On the substance, however, all disputed material was exempt from disclosure, no further steps were required of the MoD, and the appeal was dismissed. Section 40(2) required no separate consideration in light of the findings on the other exemptions.
