Immigration and Nationality Directorate

HC Deb 26 June 2002 vol 387 cc958-9W

Norman Baker

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what percentage of letters received by the IND in 2000 went unanswered; [64236]

(2) what the average response time was for letters sent by (a) hon. Members and (b) others to the IND in the last 12 months; [64240]

(3) for what reason it is not the policy of the IND to acknowledge all correspondence; what percentage of written communications are acknowledged; and if he will make a statement. [64238]

Beverley Hughes

[holding answer 25 June 2002]: Information on all correspondence received by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) in 2000, and on the average length of time taken for officials to respond to hon. Members' correspondence over the last 12 months is not recorded centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. IND received over one million pieces of correspondence during 2001–02, and systems are not yet in place to identify whether responses were given to all categories of correspondence we have seen.

We are however now developing measures to record and track all categories of public correspondence, including MP's correspondence. The Home Office Customer Communication Foundation project was suspended last November and has now been replaced by a short term/tactical Correspondence Tracking System (CTS) project to address the handling of correspondence and the provision of accurate management information. The project is due to begin on 1 July 2000 and will be rolled out for operational use during the autumn. IND's ministerial and treat official correspondence are both included in the intended scope of the project.

The Home Office's service delivery agreement for 2001–04, which commits all directorates, including the IND to replying to 95 per cent. of public correspondence within 20 days by the end of 2001–02, does not require that such correspondence also be acknowledged. However, it is IND's policy to acknowledge the receipt of all immigration, asylum, asylum support and citizenship applications either by the sending of a letter or the issue of a form. Other casework-related correspondence is not routinely acknowledged at present although we are considering the feasibility of acknowledging certain categories, when backlogs are reduced to a frictional level.