Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the time taken to respond to (a) written parliamentary questions and (b) correspondence from Members of Parliament.

The Home Office is working to improve our performance in answering written parliamentary questions. For details on this continuous improvement I refer the Hon Member to the letter sent from Home Office to the Procedure Committee dated 21 June 2022 https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/23223/documents/169558/default/.

The Department works to a target of responding to 95% of Hon. Member’s written correspondence within 20 working days.

Performance against target has been impacted by an unprecedented increase in MPs queries prompted by successive global cases and a surge in HM Passport Office applications following the pandemic.

The Home Office has since implemented a correspondence recovery plan and as a result, the Home Office is due to return to its 20-day service standard in the week commencing 16 January 2023.