§ John ThursoTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what proportion of Ordinary Written Questions to her Department were answered within five sitting days of tabling, and what proportion of Questions for a Written Answer on a642W named day received a substantive answer on that day, in (a) the 2002–03 parliamentary session and (b) this parliamentary session, broken down by month. [171183]
§ Alun MichaelRecords for Session 2002/03 were not maintained in such a way to enable the Department to extract the information requested without incurring disproportionate costs. I can confirm that the new database does record all the information.
For this parliamentary session up to 30 April 2004 the information requested is below.
Written Questions Total Received
Number answered
within five
sitting days
Percentage answered
within five
sitting days
27/11/2003–27/12/2003 395 205 51.9 28/12/2003–27/01/2004 478 263 55 28/01/2004–27/02/2004 490 126 25.7 28/02/2004–28/03/2004 590 114 19.3 29/03/2004–30/04/2004 228 80 35
Named Day Questions Total Received
Number received a
substantive
answered on
the given day
Percentage answered
on the given
day
27/11/2003–27/12/2003 69 9 13 28/12/2003–27/01/2004 73 20 27.4 28/01/2004–27/02/2004 73 13 17.8 28/02/2004–28/03/2004 108 13 12 29/03/2004–30/04/2004 45 0 0 Defra endeavours to reply to all parliamentary questions within parliamentary deadlines wherever possible. I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. friend the Leader of the House to the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) on 3 March 2004, Official Report column 907W.