HOW many potential trafficking or slavery victims have been found in a government operation?

How many lone child migrants have been reunited with UK relatives in the past year? How many torture victims have applied for sanctuary?

What has the been spent on compensating people for mis-administration of their asylum claims and how much has it cost to put people up in jail cells overnight during journeys to detention centres in England?

According to the Home Office, the answers are that they cannot tell us.

The above questions are just a fraction of those asked by MPs and peers in recent weeks. The Home Office handles a large number of official enquiries every day on topics ranging from terrorism to visas.

Frequent reasons given for failing to answer include that the information has not been recorded or would be too expensive to provide.

However, MPs and charities have raised concerns over the lack of answers from the department charged with ensuring both public safety and border security.

Graham O’Neill of the Scottish Refugee Council (SRC) called the issue a “frustration” and said 14 questions on asylum seeker accommodation had resulted in just one satisfactory answer over six months.

Meanwhile, UK-wide Migrant Voice told The National access to “comprehensive, reliable information” is “vital” in establishing the truth about the treatment of “some of the world’s most vulnerable people”.

SNP Immigration spokesperson Stuart McDonald called it a “big issue”, saying: “The Home Office does publish a lot of information, but many questions that give a more nuanced or qualitative idea are not answered. It is impossible for us to assess if what the Government is saying is true.”

This includes on contentious issues such as the use of body cams by staff delivering accommodation services for government contractors. The move was said to have been taken to “reduce incidents of intimidation and violence”, but the Home Office was unable to provide evidence of the extent of the threat to workers, with no records of such incidents available.

Questions regarding the effectiveness of the “right to rent” scheme, which requires landlords in England to carry out status checks on tenants, have also been unanswered. The department said it “does not hold information about the overall numbers of illegal migrants found in private rented accommodation”.

And when Labour’s Kate Osamor asked how many potential slavery or trafficking victims had been identified through Operation Magnify, which targets illegal working in construction, beauty and other sectors, Home Office minister Sarah Newton said that information “could only be obtained at disproportionate cost”.

No figures were given when peer Baroness Barker asked how many LGBT asylum seekers from Russia have been refused permission to remain in the UK, and Lord Roberts was told his question about the number of family reunifications of lone children had taken place in each of the past 12 months for cost reasons.

Labour’s Tulip Siddiq got the same response when asking how many asylum applications with medical evidence of torture had been received in each of the last three years, and Bradford West’s Naz Shah was turned down when she queried what compensation had been paid over mis-administration of applications for indefinite leave to remain in 2015.

And Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill told Kilmarnock and Loudon MP Alan Brown his staff “do not hold the information requested” on the use of police cells as part of journeys between Dungavel detention centre and similar sites in England.

Glasgow Central MP Alison Thewliss simply asked about outstanding claims lodged in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland in each month since January 2016.

However, amid ongoing calls to devolve immigration, Goodwill told her: “The data required to answer the question is not recorded in a way that can be reported on accurately.”

She said: “These answers increasingly paint the picture of a Tory Government which doesn’t have a clue about the impact of its own right wing, pull up the drawbridge policies.

“The Home Office likes to portray itself as being the tough, all-powerful and all-knowing gatekeeper to the United Kingdom but in reality, it doesn’t appear to collate or hold the most basic information, which is extremely concerning.”

Labour’s Ian Murray said reasons given for a failure to respond are often “vague and unsatisfactory” and Nazek Ramadan, director of Migrant Voice, said: “Transparency in any public body is important, and especially so with an office that decides the futures of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

“It is vital that people have access to comprehensive, reliable information on government decisions.”

The Home Office said: “We regularly publish extensive data sets on immigration and we are committed to providing accurate and comprehensive responses to Members of Parliament.”