§ Mr. McMasterTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many parliamentary questions to his Department have not been answered over the last five years because of disproportionate costs or because the information requested was not held centrally, how many could be answered now due to computerisation and/or more effective operational systems; and if he will list each such question along with the name and constituency of the hon. Member who tabled it.
§ Mr. Michael ForsythThe number of answers given by the Department to parliamentary questions from January 1989 to December 1993 recorded in the POLIS database as including a reference to part or all of the information being available only at disproportionate cost or because the information was not held centrally was 212. This represents around 2 per cent. of the total number of POLIS entries for written answers in that period.
Details of each of these questions can be obtained from the POLIS database, access to which is available in the Library. The further information requested is not currently available and could be answered only at disproportionate cost.