Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make it her policy to facilitate the answering of written Parliamentary Questions by Hon Members about operational matters of Arts Council of England, by copying or depositing the reply from those public bodies via the sponsoring Minister.

As noted in the Cabinet Office Guide to Parliamentary Work, there is no provision for arm’s length bodies such as Arts Council England (ACE) to provide a reply directly to Written Parliamentary Questions (WPQs). DCMS strives to provide full responses to all WPQs from Honourable Members, including those about operational matters at ACE, with whom we work closely. ACE also has a range of publicly available data resources, including its National Investment Dashboard and annual National Portfolio Organisation survey results.