Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of named day written questions were answered by his Department within the prescribed period in the (a) 2012-13 session, (b) 2013-14 session and (c) 2014-15 session to date.

The information requested for the proportion of named day answers which have been answered within the prescribed period is set out in the table below.

*Data correct as of 8 September 2014.

The Secretary of State and the ministerial team take our obligations to Parliament seriously and want to ensure that honourable members receive answers of a high standard which set out the relevant context. More complex questions can involve compiling and analysing large volumes of information, and we respond to such questions as promptly as we can.

The Department has implemented a number of measures to ensure it provides high quality and timely Parliamentary Question answers. Following these changes there has been a significant improvement in timeliness.

Departmental performance information is published on a sessional basis by the Procedure Committee. The monitoring report relating to the 2012-13 session was published on 13 February 2014 as HC1046. The report for the 2013-14 session is due to be published shortly.