Question to the Leader of the House:

To ask the Leader of the House, what steps she is taking to help ensure that Members' requests for assistance on ministerial correspondence are addressed in a timely manner.

Parliament has a right to hold Ministers to account and, as Leader of the House, I expect Government Ministers to respond quickly and effectively to Members’ correspondence. I will continue to drive that message and I encourage members who get an unsatisfactory response to write to me and I will take this up for any Member who does not get a proper response.

I recognise that my office and I have a role to play in making representations to Government on behalf of the House of Commons, and have taken a number of actions:

• I write to Cabinet colleagues every week following Business Questions to take up the concerns raised by Members, including in relation to delayed responses to correspondence.
• I have met with all departmental Permanent Secretaries where I reiterated the importance of substantive and timely answers to written parliamentary questions.
• I met separately with the Home Office Permanent Secretary following a number of concerns raised during Business Questions.
• I participated in a ‘Leading in Parliament’ session with Senior Civil Servants.
• In line with the practice of my predecessors, I have written to all members of Cabinet.
• My office oversees the Parliamentary Clerks’ Working Group, which brings together all departmental Parliamentary Clerks from across Whitehall to discuss topical issues and share best practice.

The Parliamentary Capability Team in the Cabinet Office also provides training on managing parliamentary work to civil servants of all departments and grades, including blended learning courses on ministerial correspondence and tailored workshops for Senior Civil Servants. Since April 2022, 1,160 civil servants from across government have attended training provided by the Parliamentary Capability Team on managing Ministerial Correspondence and Written Parliamentary Questions.

As per the Cabinet Office’s Guide to Handling Correspondence (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/handling-government-correspondence-guidance), departments and agencies should aim to respond to correspondence within a 20-working day target deadline. The Cabinet Office published data on this for 2022 for all government departments on GOV.UK in March 2023, and will be publishing data for Q1 and Q2 2023 shortly. The 2022 data can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers-2022.