Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Correspondence and Written Questions

(asked on 28th October 2022) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, 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.


Answered by
David Rutley Portrait
David Rutley
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
This question was answered on 7th November 2022

The Government attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of written parliamentary questions and correspondence from MPs, either directly or on behalf of their constituents. All departments have access to regular training led by the Parliamentary Capability Team through the Government Campus.

Following the significant increase in numbers since 2020, the FCDO has an ongoing focused programme of work to streamline processes and improve response times to tackle the high volume. Annual and Quarterly data on MP/Peer letter performance, published on https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers shows the FCDO has improved from 50% on time in 2021 to 72% so far this year. The latest House of Commons Procedure Committee report published in July 2022 records the FCDO improvement in answering ordinary written parliamentary questions from 87% for 2019-21 Session to 94% for 2021-22, and similarly for named day written parliamentary questions from 84% to 89%.

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