Labour is refusing to admit exactly how many reviews it has launched since the election as it would take too long to count them all.
Ministers have dismissed attempts by the Mail and MPs to find out the true scale of what on Sunday was branded the Government’s ‘review-itis’ by the BBC.
Public records have shown that Sir Keir Starmer’s administration set up at least 67 consultations and taskforces within a few months of coming to power, covering everything from the future of defence spending to putting a sugar tax on milkshakes.
In recent weeks a three-year inquiry into social care has also been established as well as a ‘rapid audit’ into grooming gangs, both of which will be carried out by Whitehall troubleshooter Baroness Casey.
Last week the controversial findings of a major internal review into extremism only emerged through a leak after the Home Office failed to publish it.
But a string of Government departments have rejected requests by the Mail to provide full details of all the work they have commissioned and how much of it has already been completed.
They said they do not keep a tally of reviews and so it would take officials who respond to Freedom of Information Act requests too long to trawl through every team’s activities.
Defra said: ‘Unfortunately, your request is very broad and covers an enormous amount of information, potentially going back over six months. Searching for and gathering it together would therefore involve a significant cost and diversion of resources from the Department’s other work.’
The Foreign Office cited the law that allows Government departments to refuse FOI requests if they think it will take staff more than 3.5 working days to comply with them, costing more than £600.
It said: ‘Your request as presently formulated is widely-framed and I estimate that it will take more than 3 and a half working days to locate, retrieve and extract this information.’
The Ministry of Housing said: ‘We are unable to determine if we hold all this information as to do so would be too costly.
‘It may be helpful to explain that this information is not centrally held and would require us to approach every team individually.’
And the Department for Transport said: ‘The Department keeps all of its policies under continuous review, to ensure they are aligned to the Government’s priorities and delivering the best possible outcomes for the public. There are many policy areas and teams within the Department that will potentially conduct reviews, investigations and consultations, whether internal or external.
‘As all policy is kept under review and this data is not held centrally, we would need to collate information on all policy areas from a diverse range of locations across the Department, which would exceed the allotted limit.’
Only the Northern Ireland Office provided the information that it launched one public consultation in Labour’s first six months in office as well as publishing the findings of a previous review.
Ministers have also refused to answer a series of Parliamentary written questions on the same topic.
In one case, Energy Minister Michael Shanks simply replied: ‘The information requested is a matter of public record and available on gov.uk.
Last night Tory MP Joe Robertson, who tried to get the answers, told this newspaper: ‘Labour can’t make a decision. They’ve commissioned review after review, wasting taxpayers’ time and money on endless talking-shops.
‘But not only is this dithering government paralysed by indecision, they don’t even know how many reviews they’ve even ordered. Worse still, when they do make a decision, it leaves the country worse off.
‘Labour spent the election campaign claiming they would change the country, so it’s about time they came clean on what their plans for change actually are.’
On the BBC’s flagship politics TV show on Sunday, presenter Laura Kuenssberg said that before the election Labour had claimed to be ‘ready to hit the ground running’ but is now suffering from ‘review-itis or consultation-itis’.
A Government spokesman said: ‘Fixing the foundations has required a fundamental rethink of how government works – not knee-jerk policy – and reviews play an important role in ensuring business leaders and other experts can inform and help to refine government policies in a timely way.
‘We are getting on with our Plan for Change to rebuild Britain and deliver higher living standards across every part of the UK, from providing £22billion to fix the NHS, to reforming the planning system to deliver 1.5million new homes over five years.’
