Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to Answer of 4 March 2021 to Question 160543 on Paula Vennells, for what reason his Department made a different judgement on whether the costs of publishing the correspondence were disproportionate for (a) January to June 2013 and (b) July to December 2013.

BEIS officials consider several factors when assessing whether a request can be obtained at proportionate cost. One such factor is the time a request is made. A request made close to the time it is requesting information from is easier to process and respond to. A request sent a significant time after an event is much more difficult to process in a timely way, as it involves a recall of historic records by the records team.