Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of items of correspondence from Parliamentarians received by (a) her Department, (b) her and (c) her Ministers in each month since August 2024 have not yet received a substantive response.
For the months of August and September all correspondence from Parliamentarians have received a substantive response. The table below covers October-January.
Month | Outstanding | Percentage |
October | 6 | 1.5% |
November | 9 | 2.5% |
December | 58 | 19.5% |
*January *Many of these cases remain within Cabinet Office target of 20 working days. | 255 | 67.5% |
These figures reflect correspondence sent directly to MoJ HQ from Parliamentarians, and do not include correspondence sent directly to its executive agencies such as HMCTS or HMPPS.
Ministers and the Department place great value on effective and timely handling of ministerial correspondence and keep performance of this under review.
The Cabinet Office publishes routine statistics on Departmental performance which can be found on GOV.UK (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers(opens in a new tab).