Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Hanson of Flint on 23 December 2024 (HL3397), what is the evidential basis for the answer given; and by whom, when, and at what cost to the public purse was the analysis which gave rise to it expedited and completed.

The disproportionate cost threshold is used by Government departments to determine whether the transparency benefits of answering a particular question can justify costs involved in retrieving the requested information. The current disproportionate cost threshold is £850, calculated at 140% of the Freedom of Information Act cost limit, currently £600, to the nearest £50.

Upon receipt of the previous Parliamentary Question (PQ) on this issue, the Home Office team primarily responsible for decisions of this nature (Status Review Unit) carefully considered the time and administrative resource it would take to retrieve the information requested. It was considered that a manual review of every decision to revoke (or cancel) a person's visa, between 7 October 2023 and the date of the PQ, would be required to retrieve the information. Taking account of the volume of decisions involved, it was concluded that this action would exceed the disproportionate cost threshold.