To ask the Secretary of State for Wales pursuant to the answer of 26 June 2006, Official Report, column 67W, on correspondence, what estimate he has made of the cost of answering the question; and if he will make a statement. (82631)

We do not record the staff time taken in replying to letters. To answer the earlier question, we would have needed to monitor staff time taken for a big enough sample of letters from hon. Members and members of the public over a long enough period to give reasonably representative results. We estimated that the total cost of the exercise would exceed three days’ work and cost more than £600.