§ Mr. KeetchTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will ask the Parliamentary Secretary for her Department in the House of Lords, to answer the letters of 13 August and 13 September, Reference H/DEFRA/FM/Snell/130901 from the hon. Member for Hereford; and if she will make a statement. [13524]
§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 9 November 2001]: A response to the hon. Member's letters of 13 August and 13 September was sent on 16 January 2002.
§ Mr. BeithTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs when she will reply to the correspondence from the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed to the Minister for the Environment dated 19 July and 14 September relating to representations from Mr. A. Hodgson of Berwick-upon-Tweed. [19982]
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§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 3 December 20011: A response to Mr. Hodgson's letter of 11 July was sent on 21 January. A copy of this response was sent to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed on 23 January. I apologise for the long delay in replying.
§ Mr. WattsTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs when her Department will clear outstanding correspondence with hon. Members. [28361]
§ Mr. MorleyMy right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to all Members of Parliament on 14 November 2001 setting out her assessment of the current problems on correspondence. The Department suffered severe disruption last year due to allocating top priority to defeating the food and mouth epidemic. On top of this the sheer volume of correspondence received since the creation of DEFRA has had a major impact on the Department's performance. I accept this is not an adequate excuse for not giving hon. Members timely responses, and now that normality is returning to the Department one of our key priorities is to rectify weaknesses in our service delivery. The size of our correspondence section has increased threefold and the line management strengthened; our IT systems have been updated and are in the process of being further improved and new guidance has been circulated throughout the Department. These actions are already beginning to bear fruit and it is hoped that the last of the backlog cases will be dispatched over the next few weeks.
§ Mr. LawsTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many letters from hon. Members to her Department did not receive substantive replies within(a) one month, (b) three months and (c) six months in 2001; and if she will make a statement on her Department's performance against targets in relation to response times to letters from hon. Members. [28816]
§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 23 January 2002]: Unfortunately our system is currently not sophisticated enough to produce these figures, although we are in the process of having it upgraded. However staff have conducted an extensive manual trawl which put the total for (a) at approximately 4,000 letters and the total for (b) at approximately 1,800 letters. For (c) 110 letters had not received a response after six months.
The Secretary of State wrote to all Members of Parliament on 14 November setting out her assessment of the Department's current problems on correspondence. The Department suffered severe disruption last year due to allocating top priority to defeating the foot and mouth epidemic. On top of this the sheer volume of correspondence received since the creation of DEFRA had a major impact on the Department's performance, resulting in a large backlog of letters. I accept this is not an adequate excuse for not giving hon. Members timely responses, and now that normality is returning to the Department one of our key priorities is to rectify weaknesses in our service delivery and to meet our response time targets. The size of our correspondence section has increased threefold and the line management strengthened; our IT systems have been upgraded and are in the process of being further improved; and new guidance has been circulated throughout the Department.
1155WThese actions are already beginning to bear fruit and it is hoped that over the next few weeks the system will be back at an even keel.