Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps their Department is taking to improve response times to written parliamentary questions.

The Government attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of Written Parliamentary Questions and every effort is made to reply within the original deadline. However, if the matters raised in the question require substantial investigation, it might not be possible to provide a substantive reply to a case within the departmental deadline. To instil best practice in the Cabinet Office, we host regular departmental training sessions for parliamentary, private office and policy leads.

The Cabinet Office’s Guide to Parliamentary Work sets out the timelines departments should seek to meet. This can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1116933/2022-10-11_-_Guide_to_Parliamentary_Work___1_.pdf

Departmental performance on Written Parliamentary Questions is published at the end of each session by the Procedure Committee and is therefore publicly available. You can find details of the last session's PQ performance here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmproced/385/report.html