Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what data their Department holds on the average response time to written parliamentary questions in the last six months; and what assessment they have made of the adequacy of that response time.

We do not hold central records on average response times and this could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.

However, the Procedure Committee publishes a report on departmental performances using Table Office data at the end of each session. The latest report can be found here [https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/126/procedure-committee/publications/reports-responses/]. The FCDO responded to 4,550 Commons PQs in the 2020 - 2021 session, answering 94 per cent of Ordinary questions on time and 89 per cent of Named Day questions on time.