The First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) has upheld the Northern Ireland Office's refusal to disclose aggregate application and expenditure figures for its Home Protection Scheme, finding that even high-level statistical data could contribute to a "mosaic" of information capable of assisting terrorists in assessing the protection afforded to police officers and other public servants.
Dismissing an appeal by Des Moore against a decision notice of the Information Commissioner, a panel chaired by Judge Mornington, sitting with members Chafer and Yates, concluded that withholding the information was reasonably necessary for the purpose of safeguarding national security under section 24(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and that the public interest favoured maintaining the exemption.
Moore had asked the Northern Ireland Office in November 2023 for the total number of applications accepted under the Home Protection Scheme in the 2022/23 financial year and their total value, together with the number of applications accepted from Police Service of Northern Ireland officers and the total amount paid in respect of them. The scheme is a threat-led protective security programme providing measures for individuals assessed to face a heightened risk from Northern Ireland-related terrorism because of their public functions, including roles in law enforcement, the administration of justice and government. The department refused the request under section 24(1) in December 2023 and maintained that position on internal review. The Commissioner upheld the refusal following a complaint, and Moore appealed in September 2024.
Section 24(1) FOIA exempts information where exemption is required for the purpose of safeguarding national security. Applying the principles approved by the Upper Tribunal in Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office v Information Commissioner and Williams, the Tribunal noted that "required" means reasonably necessary, that the exemption is deliberately not framed as a prejudice test, and that tribunals should pause and reflect carefully before overriding the sincerely held views of public authorities charged with national security responsibilities, an approach reinforced by the Supreme Court's emphasis on institutional competence in R (Begum) v Special Immigration Appeals Commission.
Moore argued that the requested information was highly aggregated, identified no individual, address, security measure or operational capability, and that the department's objections rested on speculation rather than evidence. He also pointed to past disclosures concerning other schemes without demonstrated harm, and to the public interest in scrutiny of public expenditure. The Tribunal acknowledged that these submissions were "not frivolous" and that the information might at first sight appear relatively innocuous.
The panel nevertheless found that Moore's approach evaluated each figure in isolation and overlooked the cumulative significance of the information. Because the scheme is selective rather than universal, figures on admissions and expenditure would permit conclusions to be drawn about the scale of protection available, while spending data combined with publicly known information about the types of security measures on offer could support inferences about their nature, extent and sophistication.
The question, the Tribunal said, was not whether a single figure directly identified a protected individual but whether disclosure would contribute to a broader understanding of the structure, reach and effectiveness of the scheme - the phenomenon of mosaic disclosure. It was satisfied that it would.
The Tribunal also rejected Moore's comparator argument, holding that past disclosures did not establish that disclosure in this context would be harmless. Previous releases, whether intentional or not, had in fact increased the risk arising from additional disclosure by adding information for hostile actors to factor into the mosaic. Nor was the absence of demonstrated harm from earlier disclosures determinative: section 24 is inherently concerned with the prevention of risk, and public authorities are not required to wait until harm has materialised.
Having considered both open evidence and a closed bundle of Northern Ireland Office submissions, the panel found the causal connection between disclosure and harm established and the resulting risk "real rather than hypothetical". It noted that the Northern Ireland-related terrorism threat level, assessed as Severe at the time of the request, had been raised back to Severe on 30 April 2026 after a period at Substantial, describing threat levels as volatile and changeable.
On the public interest balance, the Tribunal accepted that transparency over public expenditure carried genuine weight and that the information was not intrinsically sensitive in the manner of operational intelligence or personal data. But it found that material already in the public domain reduced the incremental benefit of further disclosure while simultaneously increasing the potential for harmful inferences, and that substantial weight had to be given to maintaining an exemption where a real risk to national security had been established. The public interest in protecting individuals, and their families, from the threat of terrorist violence outweighed the transparency benefits identified.
