Lownie said government departments give contradictory responses to his requests for documents about Andrew, including saying that they do not exist, and then that there are so many that it will be too expensive to search through them. A government department can refuse an FoI request if getting the information will cost too much money or take too much time.
Given the quote above specifically states that theses responses have been given to “requests” - i.e. more than one request, and each request would be for different records, I think this is the Guardian looking to stir up a story here (what a surprise, I know!).
In case you’re not familiar with the Freedom of Information Act, you don’t have to disclose documents if they no longer exist (obviously!). And given most government departments also have to comply with GDPR, which requires them to not hold personal data for any longer than is necessary, most departments and indeed companies will routinely destroy records after six years. Andrew ceased to be a trade envoy in 2011 I think? So yes, many of the records relating to that will now have been destroyed, and that is not remotely suspicious.
Under section 12 of FOIA any public body is also entitled to decline a request for information if it would cost more than £600 to find and extract the requested information. Government bodies, which receive an awful lot of FOIA requests, have all calculated how many hours of a junior employee’s time that will be. If you are looking at largely paper archives (which records more than 15 years old will mostly be) that time gets eaten up very quickly if retrieval of archive boxes and a manual search is necessary. And so many, many requests are routinely rejected on the grounds of cost.
So, both of these reasons for declining some of the requests are very likely true, and justified under the statute. But where’s the story in that?