Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps they are taking to reduce backlogs of Member correspondence in their office.

The Government attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of correspondence, particularly from Parliamentarians. As per the Cabinet Office’s Guide to Handling Correspondence on gov.uk, departments and agencies should aim to respond to correspondence within a 20-working day target deadline.

With regards to timeliness of responses to enquiries received by members, 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

Every effort must be made to reply to correspondence promptly and within the original deadline. However, if the matters raised in the correspondence require substantial investigation, it might not be possible to provide a substantive reply to a case within the departmental deadline.

DSIT was founded in February 2023 so there is not yet enough data to comment meaningfully on performance or response times. Making the most of the opportunities presented by the formation of a new department, the new team is working to maximise efficiency and innovation. Performance is regularly reviewed to ensure response times and backlogs are managed.