Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, if he will estimate the total number of ministerial replies from his Department to hon. Members in a parliamentary session; and what proportion of such replies are sent (a) by letter and (b) by email.

Based on the last parliamentary session, we estimate that 6,960 Ministerial replies are sent out from the Department of Energy and Climate Change to hon. Members. The time taken to establish what proportion of such replies are sent by a) letter, or b) email, would involve filtering down more specifically, and this would involve significant manual sifting of individual correspondence items and thus entail a disproportionate cost. However, we estimate that 98% of replies are sent by letter, as we only reply to Ministerial letters by e-mail on request from hon. Members, and we are rarely asked to do so.