Further supplementary memorandum from
the Principal Clerk, Table Office (Session 2008-09, P 24)
INTRODUCTION
1. The Procedure Committee has asked for
a further supplementary memorandum from the Table Office to assist
it in its inquiry into Written Parliamentary Questions. In the
context of the Committee's interest in mechanisms which could
be introduced to deal with late and unsatisfactory answers to
Questions, and in light of the House of Lords practice of publishing,
on a daily basis, a list of Questions unanswered after 14 days,
we have specifically been asked:
(a) whether it would be possible to publish,
at the end of each Session, a list of the questions left unanswered;
(b) whether it would be possible to compile,
on a sessional or annual basis, an assessment of the performance
of different Government departments in answering questions on
time;
(c) whether it would be possible to compile,
on a sessional or annual basis, an assessment of how quickly,
on average, departments replied to questions (ie including all
questions, not just those which were answered late); and
(d) a rough estimate of the extra work that would
be required to implement the above options.
2. The original memorandum to the Committee's
inquiry submitted by my predecessor David Natzler explained the
Table Office's current relatively limited role in relation to
Answers12[10]
and dealt with the possibility of formally identifying Questions
unanswered after a given period of time. David Natzler also attended
an informal meeting of the Committee at which these subjects were
discussed.
3. When considering the Lords' practice
of publishing a list of Questions unanswered after 14 days, it
is important to bear in mind the great difference between the
number of Questions for written answer tabled by Members in each
House. In Session 2007-08, 6,530 Questions for written answer
were tabled in the Lords, compared with 73,357 in the Commons.
On 26 January 2009 48 Questions stood on the House of Lords Business
paper as having been unanswered after 14 days. A search of the
Parliamentary Information Management System (PIMS) on the same
day showed 1,179 Questions for written answer tabled by Commons
Members between the start of the 2008-09 Session and 12 January
2009 which had not been answered.
4. One consequence of the difference in
the volume of Questions between the Lords and the Commons is that
in the Lords it is possible for staff to compile the daily list
from the original material, whereas in relation to Commons Questions
it would be necessary to extract all statistical or other information
from interrogation of material held on PIMS. The accuracy of any
information published purporting to compare the performance of
Departments in speed of answering Questions would therefore be
dependent on the accuracy and timeliness of entry of material
onto the PIMS database. While the database is generally highly
reliable, there are occasions when, because of the way in which
information is captured, publication of answers is several days
after the date of answer. In any recording system it would regularly
be the case that Departments would consider that an Answer had
been given while the House's recording system did not show that
as having happened.
5. In the House of Lords there is an expectation
that Answers will be provided to written Questions within 14 days.
In the House of Commons, Questions for answer on a named day are
tabled for answer on a specified date which may be at the earliest
the day three sitting days after the date of tabling, and ordinary
written Questions are nominally tabled for answer no earlier than
two sitting days after the date of tabling. While the Government
has given an undertaking to seek to provide Answers to ordinary
written Questions within one working week, 13[11]
there is no requirement on them to do so, and agreement would
have to be reached on the time period after which an Answer could
be considered to be late. Any system which deemed Answers received
later than two or five days after tabling to be late would result
in far higher numbers of late Answers being recorded than the
figure of 1,179 referred to in paragraph 3 above.
6. The Committee will wish to take into
account the fact that Questions for written answer vary enormously
in the quantity and complexity of the information they seek, and
often the Table Office as part of its editing process will merge
separate but related Questions into a single Question. In addition
certain Departments and Government agencies, or sections or units
within them, have a much heavier load in respect of answering
written Questions than others. In the light of those two factors,
it may not be generally accepted that a list ranking Departments
by the number of unanswered Questions is a reliable indicator
of Departments' performance.
7. Finally, the Committee may wish to consider
the effect that a system designed to measure Departments' performance
primarily by the measurable yardstick of time taken to answer
Questions might have on the quality of Answers, which is
understood to be the second main concern of Members. A recording
system which provided an incentive to Departments to produce an
answer by a certain date might result in less full, accurate or
helpful information being provided in Answers by Departments to
ensure that they met the date target.
LIST OF
QUESTIONS LEFT
UNANSWERED AT
THE END
OF EACH
SESSION
8. A list of Questions unanswered at the
end of each Session could be produced relatively easily early
in the following Session. However it would have to be borne in
mind that the fact that a Question has not been answered before
prorogation takes place is not necessarily indicative of a failing
on the part of a Minister or Department. Where Questions are tabled
shortly before prorogation there is no reason to expect Departments
to be able to answer more speedily than they would at another
time of year, and arguably Members are not greatly inconvenienced
in such circumstances: they receive a so-called "prorogation
Answer", stating that it has not proved possible to reply
in the time available, and are able to re-table Questions from
the first day of the succeeding Session. At the end of the 2007-08
Session, in addition, the uncertainty over the precise date of
prorogation meant that Departments were prevented from answering
Questions which had been legitimately tabled for answer on 27
November 2008, whether for ordinary or named day answer, because
the House prorogued on 26 November.
SESSIONAL OR
ANNUAL LISTS
OF PERFORMANCE
OF DIFFERENT
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS
(A) IN
ANSWERING QUESTIONS
ON TIME
AND (B)
IN SPEED
OF ANSWERING
ALL QUESTIONS
9. While PIMS records the date upon which
a Question is answered it is not possible at the moment to interrogate
the system automatically to produce information on Questions answered
"late", however this is defined, or to calculate the
average length of time taken to answer Questions; and even if
it were any resulting report would not take into account any of
the factors which may result in a Question not receiving an answer
for legitimate reasons as this information is not recorded. It
may be untimely to contemplate system enhancements ahead of the
outcomes of the current review of PIMS' services and functionality
delivery. It would however be possible to include specifications
in the next generation of information management systems to enable
reporting on late and unanswered questions, provided a clear definition
of late answers had been agreed and a means of capturing all the
required information had been established. If such information
were automatically retrievable through PIMS it would be possible
to provide figures on a sessional or calendar year basis, but
a substantial staff resource, possibly amounting to a person-week
or more, would be required to transform the statistics in a useful
format. Without being able to retrieve the basic information from
a PIMS search automatically, considerably more staff time would
be involved. As noted above, agreement would first have to be
reached on the period after which an Answer could be considered
to be late.
January 2009
10 12 At paragraph 34. Back
11
13 See, eg, Official Report, 22 January 2009, cols 893-4. Back
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