§ Mrs. ClwydTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many questions were tabled for reply by his Department in each Session since 1979–80; in how many instances in each year the reply has been that providing the information involved disproportionate cost; and in how many instances in each year questions have been given the reply that the information was not available centrally. [16789]
§ Mr. HoramThe Department of Health was not formed until July 1988, therefore information is not available for the period before then.
A list of the number of written and oral parliamentary questions answered by the Department in the sessions 1988–89 to 1995–96, as supplied by the POLIS database, is available in the Library.
Other information requested is shown in the table:
Session PQ answered with "disproportionate cost" in reply PQ answered with "Not available/collected centrally" in reply 1988–89 21 156 1989–90 10 200 1990–91 18 193 1991–92 6 130 1992–93 35 327 1993–94 39 227 1994–95 42 310 1995–96 24 276 Source:
1. POLIS database.
2. Due to the on-going development of the POLIS database and the way figures were collated statistics given previously may now be out of date. The figures supplied in this reply are therefore not comparable with those given previously.