Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what the average response time was for her Department to respond to an enquiry from an MP once an enquiry had been received by the MP (a) hotline and (b) account management team in (a) 2019, (b) 2020 and (c) 2021.

The Government attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of correspondence from MPs, either directly or on behalf of their constituents.

The average speed to answer calls to the FCDO MP Consular hotline is consistently less than 30 seconds, with the exception of 2020, when the average increased to over two minutes, because of the COVID pandemic.

The FCDO does not have an account management team. However, data on the timeliness of responses to correspondence from MPs and Peers for 2019 and 2020 is published on Gov.uk here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers. Data for 2021 will be published by the Cabinet Office in due course.