Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many times his Department answered Named Day written parliamentary questions stating that it would not be possible to answer a question within the usual time period, in the last 12 months.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department provides a holding reply as a courtesy to hon. Members if a Named Day written parliamentary question is not expected to be answered on the named date. In the period 1 November 2022 to 31 October 2023, the Department received a total of 2,980 Named Day questions, out of which we issued 1,115 holding replies of the nature specified by the hon. Member.
Asked by: Julian Knight (Independent - Solihull)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps their Department is taking to improve response times to written parliamentary questions.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department has answered 4,509 written parliamentary questions from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the six-month period covering 1 March 2023 to 31 August 2023. Out of that number, the Department answered 3,555 within the required timeframes.
The Department has been embarking on an internal recovery programme to improve PQ performance, and in the most recent sitting month, July 2023, the Department achieved an on-time answering rate of 90.4%, exceeding our target set by Parliament.
Asked by: Julian Knight (Independent - Solihull)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data their Department holds on the average response time to written parliamentary questions in the last six months; and what assessment they have made of the adequacy of that response time.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department has answered 4,509 written parliamentary questions from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the six-month period covering 1 March 2023 to 31 August 2023. Out of that number, the Department answered 3,555 within the required timeframes.
The Department has been embarking on an internal recovery programme to improve PQ performance, and in the most recent sitting month, July 2023, the Department achieved an on-time answering rate of 90.4%, exceeding our target set by Parliament.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 19 July 2023 to Question 193672 on Department of Health and Social Care: Contracts, what estimate he has made of the cost of providing an answer to that Question.
Answered by Will Quince
In relation to Question 193672, there were 405 contracts which were active with a value of over £1 million on the Department’s central procurement and contract management database over the last five years. To provide an answer on whether “the goods and services contracted for have not been received and are no longer expected to be received in the last five years” we would have to consult all the individual contract managers for these contracts to obtain this type of information, which would then have to be properly collated and validated.
The contract manager would need to liaise with colleagues in the Department’s Finance directorate to find the relevant purchase orders to link spend to associated contracts and then make an assessment on whether goods and services were no longer expected to be received. We estimate that this would take a minimum of two hours per contract; multiplied by the number of contracts (405) this would total 810 hours. At a cost of £25 per hour this would equate to £20,250, which exceeds the disproportionate cost threshold of £850.
Presently, the Department has 249 contracts over £1 million which were active in the last 12 months. In a similar fashion to the above, the information requested for these contracts regarding goods and services not being received or not expected to be received is not held centrally and can only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
Report May. 13 2024
Committee: Procedure CommitteeFound: Second Report - Written Parliamentary Questions: Departmental Performance in Session 2022–23 HC 676 Report
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question
To ask the Leader of the House, further to the Written Answer by Lord True on 19 June (HL8246), what explanations he has had from the Department of Health and Social Care concerning the number of questions allocated to that department that remain unanswered after 10 working days.
Answered by Lord True - Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal
As Leader of the House of Lords I have reiterated to all Front Bench Ministers the importance of adhering to the 10 day target for responses to questions for written answer. As stated in my response on 19 June (HL8246) the Department for Health and Social Care faced significant disruption to the delivery of parliamentary support due to the pressures they faced during the Covid-19 pandemic. They have since implemented a Written Parliamentary Question Recovery Plan to deal with the backlog of written questions. At the time of writing, DHSC’s PQ on-time rate for July is 89.6%, the highest percentage during a sitting month since early 2020.
The Permanent Secretary has further reassured me that they are committed to improving the process and have taken further steps to bring performance levels back to pre-pandemic levels including streamlining the drafting process. I will be looking for further improvements on their record as a result of the Department's Recovery plan. It is important that the highest standards are achieved by all Departments in replying to members of the House.
Oral Evidence May. 07 2024
Inquiry: Men's healthFound: Prevention in Health and Social Care Consideration of the Government Response to the Healthy Places
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 2 February 2024 to Question 11392 on Department of Health and Social Care: Ministers' Private Offices, what the cost was of the refurbishment to ministerial offices in 2023.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The total cost of refurbishment of the ministerial offices in 2023 was approximately £140,000. This answer was previously shared in the answer to the hon. Member for Ilford North on the 20 of September 2023 to Question 198375.
Correspondence Apr. 17 2024
Committee: Procedure CommitteeFound: Correspondence to DSHC regarding Written Parliamentary Questions answering performance in the Session
Asked by: George Galloway (Workers Party of Britain - Rochdale)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of mould in the (a) owner-occupied, (b) private rented and (c) social rented sector.
Answered by Jacob Young - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
As set out in my answer to Question UIN 24168 on 3 May 2024, the English Housing Survey sets out levels of damp and mould in all tenures of residential accommodation. Details are available online.
For more information on the health impacts of damp and mould in homes, please see our consolidated guidance developed with the Department of Health and Social Care. It can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/damp-and-mould-understanding-and-addressing-the-health-risks-for-rented-housing-providers.
Following the tragic death of the two-year-old Awaab Ishak, due to the appalling housing conditions that Awaab Ishak and his family had to live in, the Secretary of State summoned the leadership of their landlord, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, to explain why such catastrophic failures had been allowed to happen. The Government has also legislated for ‘Awaab’s law’, introduced via the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023.
In his written statement of 9 January 2024 (HCWS174) the Secretary of State launched a consultation on how ‘Awaab’s law’ will operate in practice, including the specific requirements on social landlords. The consultation closed on 5 March 2024 and we are analysing the responses. Once this has been completed, we will bring forward secondary legislation as soon as possible.
The department, last year, provided £15 million of funding to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to tackle the worst cases of damp and mould. They have now completed improvements to around 4,000 homes.