I've corresponded with the civil service a few times recently and the service now is shite.
[1]: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/10/who-are-the-...
life is exhausting sometimes
The later reply about it being because OCR does use what's below the line and it shouldn't be obscured looks like the ticket was escalated to someone who understood what was really being asked for.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/806/
Their contract is unlikely to allow queries to be ignored, and the people receiving the queries are likely to have targets to resolve "tickets" (queries) within a particular time / to a particular satisfaction.
If the query doesn't tick a particular easy-to-answer box, they'll use the best form answer available in order to "resolve" the ticket and meet their targets.