Letter from the Secretary of the Cabinet
and Head of the Home Civil Service o all Permanent Secretaries
Ministerial correspondence and dealings
with Parliament
The Cabinet Office is preparing the annual report
to Parliament on Department's handling of correspondence from
Mps. I am afraid that despite some encouraging trends, the report
will show that the overall performance of Departments (including
Agencies) in replying to letters from MPs remains poor and Madam
Speaker has yet again taken up with me the unhappiness of MPs
at the service which they are getting. This is disappointing and
I am writing to remind colleagues of the need to improve our handling
of correspondence from MPs.
More generally, I have received a warning from Madam
Speaker about the number of recent cases where Departments have
mishandled their dealings with Parliament, which I think we would
be wise not to ignore.
The report will show a modest increase of 5 per cent
in the proportion of letters receiving a reply with target in
1999. This is moving in the right direction, but it still means
that only 60 per cent of all correspondence from Mps to Ministers
received a reply within the target period. The report will also
show that although there has been a small improvement in the performance
of many Departments and Agencies, most continue to perform poorly.
One third of the larger Departments and Agencies failed to meet
their targets in over 50 per cent of cases. This means that in
these Departments and Agencies the majority of replies to letters
from MPs to Ministers are now routinely late. This simply cannot
continue.
I recognise the excellent work which is being done
in some Departments and Agencies to improve performance; and I
appreciate that external factors such as an increase in correspondence
or an internal reorganisation may have had an impact on correspondence
systems. However, MPs and Madam Speaker remain extremely concerned
that some Departments and Agencies appear to have made no significant
improvements in performance across the board; and I will be writing
again to any Department or Agency which reports a deterioration
in performance.
The report to Parliament on Departments' and Agencies'
handling of correspondence from MPs will be published later this
month by arranged PQ. The Central Secretariat in the Cabinet Office
(GTN 270 1868) will inform your office as soon as we have a firm
date. They will also provide advance copies of the PQ.
I should perhaps say that poor performance on correspondence
is only one of a litany of recent failures by Departments in their
treatment of Parliament which Madam Speaker has taken me through.
She has conveyed to me a growing sense in Parliament that either
the Civil Service attaches less importance nowadays to getting
right the Government's dealings with Parliament or that for some
reason there has been a sudden loss of collective memory in Whitehall
about how business on such simple matters as placing papers in
the Library of the House should be conducted. For the most part
this is seen as a failure on the part of civil servants rather
than of Ministers (although separately there are frustrations
with Ministers on such matters as answering oral Parliamentary
Questions briefly and to the point). I shall be writing to individual
permanent secretaries about some of the cases; and have done my
best to reassure Madam Speaker that the cases - roughly ten in
the last couple of months - are the sort of most unfortunate coincidence
which occur from time to time in large organisations and that
they certainly mark no intended disrespect to Parliament on the
part of any of us. I have also promised that we will organise
centrally some form of training for staff in Parliamentary branches
and elsewhere who have regular dealings with Parliament to address
the main rubbing points and ensure that there is a good grasp
of essentials. But there is a basic message for all of us behind
these cases which I think we would be wise not to ignore.
Sir Richard Wilson, Secretary of the Cabinet and
Head of the Home Civil Service
7 April 2000
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