Disproportionate Cost

Further to my earlier posts about the MCB's finances and a series of Parliamentary questions from Michael Gove, these questions have continued and one answer stands out:

Michael Gove: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much (a) financial support and (b) support in kind her Department and its agencies have given to the Muslim Council of Britain in each year since 1997. [97952]

Dr. Howells: This information is not held centrally in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. To provide an answer to this question would therefore incur disproportionate cost.

Some of us think that the MCB represents a disproportionate cost itself if it receives any public money at all. But this is a straightforward refusal by a Minister to answer a question of genuine public interest from an M.P.