§ Mr. Skeetasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many parliamentary questions were answered by his Department in the most recent year for which figures are available; and whether this represents an increase or decrease over previous years.
§ Mr. Geoffrey FinsbergStatistics on parliamentary questions answered are kept by sessional years, the length of which are not precisely comparable. In the following table, the figures in brackets represent the number of sitting days on which questions were answered in the House of Commons.
Number 1978–79 (90 days) 2,500 1979–80 (240 days) 6,785 1980–81 (164 days) 3,579