Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the savings to his Department from the Q&A system in the (a) 12 months and (b) five years since 4 June 2014; what additional ICT systems or improvements to existing systems his Department has introduced or plans to introduce that would not have been feasible without the Q&A system; and what assessment he has made of the extent to which the system has made it easier to answer questions from hon. Members on time.

We have not yet quantified the savings made by the introduction of the Q&A system since its introduction in June. However, the new system has enabled us to make savings from the cancellation of The Stationery Office (TSO) PQ feed for House of Commons PQs. The electronic answering of House of Commons questions, rather than the hand delivery of paper copies of answers to Parliament, also represents a significant improvement in efficiency.

Another benefit of the Q&A system is for the reporting of the timeliness of answers to Parliamentary Questions to be delivered with greater consistency and accuracy across all answering bodies.

As part of the Ministry of Justice’s commitment to the Government’s “Digital by Default” approach, Parliamentary Branch has worked in partnership with MoJ Digital Services to develop a case management system that imports data automatically from the Q&A system. This has made further savings in stationery costs and staff time.

This forms part of a series of steps we have taken in the Ministry of Justice to improve the timeliness of answers provided to Members, while also ensuring that answers are placed in the appropriate context.