The First-tier Tribunal has ordered the Department for Business and Trade to confirm or deny whether it holds information about Bounce Back Loans connected to companies previously owned by a sitting MP, after finding that the Information Commissioner wrongly upheld a neither confirm nor deny response.
The ruling in George Greenwood v Information Commissioner & Department for Business and Trade [2026] UKFTT 00835 (GRC) was handed down on 29 May 2026 and concerns an FOI request made by journalist George Greenwood in December 2024. Greenwood had asked DBT to confirm whether it had opposed the compulsory strike-off of two companies - J A M Financial Limited and Gym Live Health & Fitness - at Companies House, and whether it had done so on the basis that each company had an outstanding Bounce Back Loan.
Both companies had been owned or controlled by James McMurdock, who was elected as MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock at the July 2024 general election. Companies House records showed that strike-off proceedings against each company, commenced in January 2023, had been suspended the following month, giving rise to the inference that a third party, potentially a government department, had intervened.
DBT declined to confirm or deny whether it held the relevant information, relying on section 43(3) FOIA on the basis that doing so would be likely to prejudice the companies' commercial interests. The ICO accepted that position in a Decision Notice issued on 6 October 2025, drawing in part on the Tribunal's earlier ruling in Spotlight on Corruption v Information Commissioner [2023] UKFTT 00007 (GRC).
The Tribunal, sitting before Judge A. Marks CBE with Members K. Grimley Evans and P. DeWaal, rejected that analysis. It found that the three-stage test required for a prejudice-based exemption - actual prejudice to commercial interests, a causal link between that prejudice and the act of confirming or denying, and a real likelihood of harm - had not been met on the facts.
Central to the panel's reasoning was the state of both companies at the time of the request. Neither had filed accounts since October 2021, compulsory strike-off proceedings had been on the public record since early 2023, and there was no evidence of any current or future commercial activity. The Tribunal concluded that customers, suppliers or investors would in those circumstances already have been aware of each company's financial difficulties, and that a NCND response could not credibly prevent further harm to commercial interests that were, to all intents, dormant.
The panel was also critical of the procedural basis for DBT's position, noting that the department had not consulted either company about the prejudice that disclosure might cause. The ICO's Decision Notice had therefore rested on speculation rather than evidence, contrary to the Commissioner's own published guidance on section 43, which states that generic assertions of commercial sensitivity are insufficient and that, where third-party commercial interests are invoked, the authority should ordinarily seek evidence of actual concerns from the party said to be at risk.
The Spotlight decision was distinguished on its facts. That case had involved a broad request made at the height of the pandemic for the names of all companies that had received BBLs and other government-backed support. The Tribunal found the context too different to carry persuasive weight in a narrowly-focused request concerning two near-dormant micro-companies made nearly two years after the BBL scheme had closed.
A substitute Decision Notice was issued requiring DBT to comply with its section 1(1)(a) duty - confirming or denying whether it holds information within the scope of the request - within 35 working days, without reliance on section 43(3). Should DBT confirm it holds the information, it must then either disclose it or issue a compliant refusal notice under section 17 FOIA. A failure to comply with the substitute Decision Notice could lead to contempt proceedings.
The case is one of a small number in which the Tribunal has found the ICO to have wrongly accepted a neither confirm nor deny position under a commercial interests exemption. Public authorities invoking section 43(3) must be able to point to real and evidenced harm, particularly where the commercial circumstances of the parties concerned have materially changed since the underlying events took place.
