The question of whether public authorities can rely on exemptions which have been claimed for the first time before the Commissioner or the Information Tribunal is a notoriously controversial one (see further e.g. Home Office & Ministry of Justice v IC where the Home Office sought to argue, against existing Information Tribunal orthodoxy, that a public authority could rely on an exemption no matter how late in the process – see further my earlier post on this judgment). The issue of late reliance is however particularly acute in respect of s. 36 FOIA (exemption where disclosure would be likely to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs). S. 36 provides for a rather unusual exemption in that, in contrast with other exemptions under FOIA, the exemption is only engaged where a relevant opinion has been reached by the ‘qualified person’. The fact that the exemption under s. 36 will only be engaged in circumstances where a particular event takes place (i.e. the relevant opinion has been reached), a question arises as to whether that event must take place prior to the request being responded to (i.e. via the refusal notice) in order for s. 36 to be engaged. This issue has recently been considered by the Tribunal in the case of Roberts v IC & DBIS (EA/2009/0035), 20 November 2009. In that case, the Tribunal held that because information could only be withheld if it was exempt at the time of the request (or more precisely at the time the request was being responded to), it followed that an opinion which was reached after the refusal notice was sent out could not constitute a valid opinion for the purposes of s. 36. The restrictive approach to s. 36 adopted in Roberts is likely to be regarded as a controversial decision and may well be appealed. In the meantime, public authorities should probably err on the side of caution and aim to ensure that, wherever possible, any s. 36 opinion is obtained prior to the release of the refusal notice. It is in any event worth noting that, in the earlier case of Student Loans Company v IC, the Tribunal held that it did not have powers under s. 58 FOIA to consider the application of s. 36 because: (a) no reliance had been placed on that section before the Commissioner and (b) the Tribunal only had powers to decide whether the Commissioner’s decision was lawful (i.e. having regard to the case which was put before the Commissioner).