Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that questions for written answer from members of the House of Lords that are allocated to the Department for Health and Social Care are answered on time; and what plans they have to recruit more staff for that purpose.

The Department has received an unprecedented number of Written Questions since March 2020. We are working hard to improve our response rate through an iterative written questions recovery plan and performance is now improving at a steady rate. The core Department has increased by a further 400 posts since December 2020, to support the COVID-19 response across all areas.