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The request covers offences including violence, sexual offences, drugs, weapons, theft and robbery, with Mr Bates proposing that figures below five be suppressed to reduce the risk of individuals being identified.

In his formal response to the Government’s appeal, Bates quotes the MoJ as arguing that “the interests and fundamental rights and freedoms of the affected data subjects outweigh the legitimate interests in disclosure of the requested information”.

The Government’s case, as recorded and challenged in Mr Bates’s response, centres on two principal arguments: that producing the figures would exceed Freedom of Information cost limits, and that releasing sufficiently detailed statistics could breach offenders’ data-protection rights.

On privacy, the MoJ argues that individual offenders could potentially be identified by combining nationality and offence statistics with information already available through court proceedings, press reports and other disclosures – a so-called “mosaic effect”.

Mr Bates attacks that position as “paradoxical and perverse”, arguing that criminals’ identities and convictions are already routinely placed in the public domain through the principle of open justice.

He also rejects the Government’s concerns about cumulative disclosures, arguing that the requested statistics concern populations of thousands and pointing to his proposal that figures below five should be suppressed.

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PA

Mr Bates’s response also records the MoJ as estimating that producing the requested information would require around 88 hours of work – well above the statutory cost ceiling relied upon by the department.

But Mr Bates disputes that calculation and accuses the department of presenting materially different accounts of the work required during the Information Commissioner’s investigation and its subsequent Tribunal appeal.

In a stinging submission, he tells the Tribunal: “Either the MoJ misled the IC or it is now misleading the Tribunal.”

The allegation is made by Mr Bates and has not been determined by the Tribunal.

Bates is also seeking to have the MoJ’s fresh cost evidence excluded, arguing that the department should not be allowed to repair an inadequate case at the appeal stage.

The row comes amid wider controversy over the availability of official statistics allowing the public to examine offending by nationality or immigration status.

The Government has expanded separate statistics on foreign national offenders in the immigration system this year.

Home Office releases now provide figures for particular groups of foreign national offenders, including separate breakdowns by nationality, broad offence group and sentence length.

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Official figures for the year ending June 2026 show that 8,507 foreign national offenders left immigration detention.

Of those, 1,960 were Albanian, 1,058 Romanian and 743 Polish.

The figures also show 2,849 had drug offences, 1,132 had violence-against-the-person offences excluding homicide and 1,112 had theft offences.

But those figures relate to specific groups of foreign national offenders within the immigration system and do not provide the comprehensive conviction-by-nationality and detailed offence breakdown sought by Mr Bates.

Mr Bates argues that the missing detail is central to the public interest in disclosure.

His response says the legitimate interest extends beyond simply understanding broad criminal-justice trends to informing public debate about patterns of offending and “the level of risk the public are exposed to”.

He described the legitimate interest in disclosure as “overwhelming”, while arguing that the potential harm to the individuals concerned is “exceptionally low”.

The First-tier Tribunal has yet to determine the Government’s appeal.

A Government spokesperson said: “This Government has prioritised the deportation of foreign national offenders with nearly 12,000 removed since July 2024 – up 41 per cent – and has changed the law so foreign prisoners can be deported earlier than ever before.

“Deported FNOs are already banned from ever returning to the UK, and early next year we will start deporting them immediately after sentencing.”

GB News also understands that the Ministry of Justice rejects the allegations of a “cover-up”.