Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I am sure that no discourtesy was intended. Of course the decisions of Grand Committees to meet are presented to the House, and so the hon. Gentleman would be aware of it by that means. I would have thought that any discourtesy was more than outweighed by the convenience to him of having the Grand Committee meet in his constituency.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

3. What recent estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of parliamentary questions for written answer.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

The average cost to the taxpayer of a question for written answer is estimated at £239. In the financial year 2010-11, a total of 46,825 written answers were published, at an estimated total cost of about £11.2 million.

[Mark Menzies]

We would all agree that written parliamentary questions are an important way of holding the Government to account, but what steps is the Deputy Leader of the House proposing to take to limit exposure to the public purse? Should hon. Members be in more control of this process?

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, but I really do not think it is for the Government to limit or try to ration the supply of questions, because, as he says, it is very important that hon. Members have that opportunity to hold the Government to account. However, I do think that hon. Members, like other public servants, should consider the impact of their activities on the public purse. It is particularly important to recognise that the right to table questions belongs to hon. Members, and hon. Members alone.