Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, what estimate he has made of the savings to the Law Officers' Departments from the Q&A system in the (a) 12 months and (b) five years since 4 June 2014; what additional ICT systems or improvements to existing systems the Law Officers' Departments have introduced or plan to introduce that would not have been feasible without the Q&A system; and what assessment he has made of the extent to which the system has made it easier to answer questions from hon. Members on time.

The Attorney General’s Office has made an estimated saving of £164 in respect of stationery costs since June 2014. There may also have been some savings in staff time but it is not possible to quantify this without incurring a disproportionate cost. There have been no other identified savings.

There have also not been any modifications made to existing ICT systems that were dependent on introduction of the Q&A system.

One of the benefits of the new system is the possibility for the reporting of the timeliness of answers to Parliamentary Questions to be delivered with greater consistency and accuracy across all answering bodies.

It will be for the Procedure Committee to evaluate the effectiveness of the new system in improving performance when it assesses the evidence following the end of the session.