Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to increase the capacity of the Department of Health and Social Care to provide answers to Questions for Written Answer on time.

Prior to the pandemic, the Department employed approximately 1,500 people. In the last eight months that has grown to approximately 2,900 staff in the core Department. The Parliamentary Questions team has doubled in size. We have created and put into action an iterative written questions recovery plan, the objectives of which are to increase the number of questions answered on time, to clear the backlog of overdue questions and to ensure high-quality answers.