Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the average length of time taken by Departments to respond to correspondence from hon. Members; and whether his Department monitors the response times of Departments to that correspondence.

The Government attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of correspondence from MPs, Peers and members of the public.

In July 2021, the Cabinet Office published data on the timeliness of responses to correspondence from MPs and Peers for 2018, 2019 and 2020 on GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers. This data measures performance by the percentage of correspondence from MPs and Peers responded to within the target response time set by each Department - rather than the average length of time taken to respond to correspondence from MPs and Peers. As per the Guide to Handling Correspondence, updated by the Cabinet Office in July 2021, the target response time set by Departments for correspondence must not exceed 20 working days.

The Cabinet Office is now in a position to publish correspondence data in a more timely manner; the data for 2021 will be published in the near future.