FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2755
You asked
Please supply how many babies under the age of 1 have passed away with a class A drug within the blood stream.
Please supply whereabouts in the West Midlands how many of the above deaths occurred in the last 5 years.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The latest publication available is Deaths related to drug poisoning, England and Wales 2020, data is available from 1993 onwards.
Unfortunately, we are unable to publish any further disaggregation of the data involving the lowest age ranges and the location (e.g. within the West Midlands) as it is considered personal information. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individuals can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.