Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made a recent assessment of waiting times for responses to Ministerial correspondence.

The Department continues to respond to correspondence from Members of Parliament, although increased volumes and the need for detailed investigation in some cases can affect response times.

To address this, the Department has deployed additional resources to complaints and correspondence teams, prioritised the reduction of backlogs, strengthened performance monitoring, introduced enhanced senior oversight, and improved case management processes to support faster and more consistent responses.

As a result of these measures, the Department has begun to reduce outstanding backlogs and increase case-handling capacity, helping to improve response times for hon. Members.

The Department’s aims to respond to complaint within 15 working days or, where a case will take longer than 15 days to respond to, set a resolution plan with the customer where cases are complex and may take longer. A resolution plan is a clear outline of how we will address and resolve a complaint. It sets out what actions will be taken, who is responsible, and the expected timescales for completing these actions.

The Department is committed to ensuring that hon. Members receive timely and accurate in-formation on behalf of their constituents and is taking urgent action to restore performance to expected standards.