§ Mr. SymsTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will reply to the letter of 25 September from the hon. Member for Poole on behalf of Avtaz Singh, reference 51037677. [20546]
§ Angela Eagle[holding answer 6 December 2001]: We are considering the representations made by the hon. Member and expect to reply to his letter soon.
§ Mr. BurnsTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many and what proportion of letters received by his Department between 20 June and 20 July were replied to(a) in under 15, (b) in under 20, (c) in under 30, (d) in under 40 and (e) in over 40 working days; [18583]
698W(2) how many, and what proportion of letters received by the Department from right hon. and hon. Members between 20 June and 20 July were replied to in (a) under 15, (b) under 20, (c) under 30, (d) under 40 and (e) over 40 working days. [21997]
§ Mr. Blunkett[holding answer 3 December 2001]: The available information on public correspondence relates solely to volumes and the number and proportion of replies sent within target. The information is not held in such a way to provide the more detailed breakdown requested. The volume of letters received from members of the public between 20 June and 20 July was 3,556. Of those, 2,736 or 76 per cent. were replied to within the target of 20 days.
The following tables give the information requested for MPs' correspondence. Information on letters on Immigration and Nationality matters, which make up roughly half the postbag, is set out in Table B. Non-Immigration and Nationality correspondence is set out in Table A.
Table A: Letters from MPs received between 20 June and 20 July (non-Immigration and Nationality correspondence) Number Percentage Number and percentage of replies: Under 15 days 189 40 Under 20 days 266 57 Under 30 days 380 81 Under 40 days 416 89 Over 40 days 52 11
Table B: Letters from MPs received between 20 June and 20 July (Immigration and Nationality matters) Number Percentage Number and percentage of replies: Under 15 days 199 22 Under 20 days 334 37 Under 30 days 414 46 Under 40 days 455 51 Over 40 days 445 49 My Department receives large amounts of correspondence from hon. Members and members of the public. We aim to send a substantive reply to all letters as soon as possible. I am determined to achieve a high level of performance in dealing quickly with correspondence.
We are working with our Information Technology partners to develop next year a Customer Contact Centre which will radically change the way we handle letters, e-mails and telephone inquiries. In the short term we are implementing a number of organisational and process changes to bring about improvements in the quality and timeliness of replies and to prepare for the Contact Centre.