Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps their Department is taking to reduce the time taken to respond to (a) written parliamentary questions and (b) correspondence from Members of Parliament.

The Department attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of written parliamentary questions and correspondence and officials remain committed to providing the highest level of service.

The Department's performance in answering written parliamentary questions on time fell during the COVID-19 pandemic and we continue to receive significantly more written questions than any other Government department. In order to improve performance, we have been delivering against our Written Parliamentary Question Recovery Plan and answered 71% of written parliamentary questions from hon. Members on time between May and July 2022.

The Department aims to reply to all correspondence within 20 working days. From May to September 2022, we answered more than 50% of correspondence within 20 working days. This doubled our previous response rate in 2021 and we are committed to making further improvements.