Oral Answers to Questions

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

The Leader of the House was asked—

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of Government Departments’ performance in answering written parliamentary questions on time.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

My office collates departmental performance information for ordinary and named day parliamentary questions for each Session, which are submitted to the Procedure Committee. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House provided data relating to the last Session to that Committee in July 2013, and those data are available on the parliamentary website.

[Nic Dakin]

In January, the Procedure Committee published a report which demonstrated that five Departments are deteriorating in their performance of answering named day questions. What is the Deputy Leader of the House doing about that?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Clearly, the Government want to ensure that best practice is spread to ensure that all Departments are performing at a very high level. If five Departments are deteriorating, a greater number are improving, and we know that even big Departments such as the Department of Health are able to achieve a fantastic score of responding to 99% of ordinary questions within an appropriate time.