Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 5 December 2014 to Question 216865, what estimate he has made of the cost of obtaining the information requested; and on what basis that estimate was arrived at.

The guide to Parliamentary work (available on the Cabinet Office website at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guide-to-parliamentary-work and already in the Library of the House) sets out that Government departments can refuse to answer a question where the cost of responding to that question would be above the disproportionate cost threshold, which is currently set at £850. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office calculated that collating a response to the hon. Member’s question would exceed this threshold.