Departmental Written Questions

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many questions tabled for answer on a named day his Department received in each of the last 12 months; and to how many such questions his Department provided a substantive answer on the day named. (305373)

The information requested is shown in the table and covers the Session from 3 December 2008 to 12 November 2009.

	Number of named day questions for answer	Number of questions answered substantively on the named day
December 2008	45	40
January 2009	75	54
February 2009	74	63
March 2009	92	56
April 2009	35	22
May 2009	79	40
June 2009	65	36
July 2009	100	62
August 2009	0	0
September 2009	59	31
October 2009	81	47
November 2009	45	31
Total	750	482

Central guidance on answering parliamentary questions is now available in the “Guide to Parliamentary Work”, at

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/parliamentary-clerk-guide.aspx

In the response to the Procedure Committee report on written parliamentary questions, the Government accepted the Committee’s recommendation that Departments be required to provide the Procedure Committee with sessional statistics in a standard format on the time taken to respond to written parliamentary questions, accompanied by an explanatory memorandum setting out any factors affecting their performance. This will be taken forward as soon as possible.

Volume 502: debated on Monday 14 December 2009