Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps their Department is taking to reduce the time taken to respond to (a) written parliamentary questions and (b) correspondence from Members of Parliament.

The Department is committed to responding to Parliamentary Questions (PQs) and correspondence in a timely manner. Between May and July inclusive, on average over 95% of PQs and 81% of enquiries from Members of Parliament were answered on time by BEIS, exceeding its departmental performance standard.

To complement the work of the Parliamentary Capability Team, the department also runs tailored training sessions for BEIS staff specific to PQs to improve the quality and timeliness of our responses.

For correspondence, it has improved the efficiency of the end-to-end correspondence process and is exploring other initiatives, such as digital solutions.