Departmental Written Questions

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many questions tabled for answer on a named day her Department received in each of the last 12 months; and to how many such questions her Department provided a substantive answer on the day named. (305384)

The information requested is in the following table:

*Named day questions by month tabled*
	2009
	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
Number answered on or before the named day	20	21	19	9	6	29	34	17	17	14	18
Number answered after the named day	62	83	91	29	47	65	43	44	53	35	34
Total number	82	104	110	38	53	94	77	61	70	49	52

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many and what percentage of parliamentary questions tabled for written answer by her Department on a named day in session 2008-09 received a substantive answer on that day. (307546)

The Department answered 829 named day questions in session 2008-09, of which 252 (30.4 per cent.) received a substantive reply on the named day.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what average time her Department took to answer questions for (a) ordinary written answer and (b) written answer on a named day in the last 12 months. (313648)

In the 12 months to 31 January 2010 the average time taken by the Department to answer (a) ordinary written questions was 14.0 sitting days and (b) named day questions was 8.9 sitting days.

With effect from the current Session of Parliament, each Department will provide the Procedure Committee with sessional statistics on the time taken to answer written questions. This implements recommendation 24 of the 3rd report from the Procedure Committee, Session 2008-09

Volume 506: debated on Friday 5 March 2010