Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps the Department has taken to reduce response times for correspondence from (a) the public and (b) Members raising constituency casework.

The Department is committed to meeting the target of responding to at least 80% of correspondence from Hon. Members, stakeholders, and members of the public within 20 working days.

The Department receives some of the highest volumes of, and most sensitive, correspondence across then Government. Ministerial correspondence performance data by the Department is published annually by the Cabinet Office at the following link:

www.gov.uk/government/collections/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers

A summary of our public correspondence response information is published annually in our annual report. I refer the Hon Member to Pages 112 to 113 of the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts for 2024/25. Similar data will be published in due course in the 2025/26 annual report.