As Leader of the House I take very seriously the responsibility incumbent on all Ministers to provide full, timely and comprehensible answers to Questions for Written Answer (QWAs). My office immediately approaches departments who have not responded to questions after 10 working days, and remains in contact with them until the questions are answered.<\/p>
I am informed that due to ongoing technical problems with software used by the Home Office for processing answers to QWAs, the usual clearance process has experienced delays since October which have caused a backlog. I have been assured that steps have now been taken to safeguard against the problem reoccurring.<\/p>
The Ministry of Justice recognise recent reductions in performance with regard to QWA responses, which I am informed is due to a reduction in resources\u200b \u200bas \u200ba result of process and system changes. The Department has assured me that they have taken steps to rectify this, including making further process improvements.<\/p>
I have written to the Secretaries of State for both Departments to stress the importance of providing full and timely responses to QWAs and have written to my front bench team to reiterate the House\u2019s expectations in the light of recent performance.<\/p>"} , "answeringMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/4329", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Baroness Evans of Bowes Park"} } , "answeringMemberPrinted" : {"_value" : "Baroness Evans of Bowes Park"} , "dateOfAnswer" : {"_value" : "2017-01-23", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "isMinisterialCorrection" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "questionFirstAnswered" : [{"_value" : "2017-01-23T15:09:22.54Z", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} ]} , "answeringDeptId" : {"_value" : "92"} , "answeringDeptShortName" : {"_value" : ""} , "answeringDeptSortName" : {"_value" : "Leader of the House of Lords"} , "date" : {"_value" : "2017-01-10", "_datatype" : "dateTime"} , "hansardHeading" : {"_value" : "Written Questions"} , "houseId" : {"_value" : "2"} , "legislature" : [{"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/terms/25277", "prefLabel" : {"_value" : "House of Lords"} } ], "questionText" : "To ask the Leader of the House whether the failure on 10 January of the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to answer Questions for Written Answer which had been tabled in November 2016 was in part due to those departments not being fully staffed to normal levels in the days following the bank holiday on 2 January.", "registeredInterest" : {"_value" : "false", "_datatype" : "boolean"} , "tablingMember" : {"_about" : "http://data.parliament.uk/members/883", "label" : {"_value" : "Biography information for Lord Jopling"} } , "tablingMemberPrinted" : [{"_value" : "Lord Jopling"} ], "uin" : "HL4521"} ], "itemsPerPage" : 10, "page" : 0, "startIndex" : 1, "totalResults" : 1, "type" : "http://purl.org/linked-data/api/vocab#Page"} }