House of Commons Procedure Committee Written Parliamentary Questions Third Report of Session 2008–09 Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 1 July 2009 HC 859 Published on 16 July 2009 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 Procedure Committee The Procedure Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to consider the practice and procedure of the House in the conduct of public business, and to make recommendations. Membership during the Session Rt Hon Greg Knight MP (Conservative, Yorkshire East) (Chairman, from 9.11.05) Ms Celia Barlow MP (Labour, Hove) Mr Christopher Chope MP (Conservative, Christchurch) Ms Katy Clark MP (Labour, North Ayrshire and Arran) Mr Mark Field MP (Conservative, Cities of London and Westminster) Mr Roger Gale MP (Conservative, North Thanet) Andrew Gwynne MP (Labour, Denton and Reddish) John Hemming MP (Liberal Democrat, Birmingham, Yardley) Mr Eric Illsley MP (Labour, Barnsley Central) Mrs Siân C. James MP (Labour, Swansea East) Mrs Linda Riordan MP (Labour, Halifax) Sir Robert Smith MP (Liberal Democrat, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) Sir Peter Soulsby MP (Labour, Leicester South) The following Members were also members of the Committee during the Parliament: Mr David Anderson MP (Labour, Blaydon) Mr Jim Cunningham MP (Labour, Coventry South) Annette Brooke MP (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and Poole North) Mr David Gauke MP (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire) Rosemary McKenna MP (Labour, Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) Sir Nicholas Winterton MP (Conservative, Macclesfield) (Chairman till 9.11.05) Mr Rob Wilson MP (Conservative, Reading East) Powers The powers of the Committee are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 147. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at http://www.parliament.uk/proccom. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Dr Lynn Gardner and Miss Sara Howe (Clerks) and Rowena Macdonald (Committee Assistant). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Procedure Committee, Journal Office, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA . The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 3318; the Committee’s email address is [email protected] 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 1 Introduction 5 2 Number of Questions 5 3 Tabling Questions 8 Types of Questions 8 ‘Trivial’ or ‘frivolous’ questions 8 Round robin questions 9 Questions where the information is already available to Members 10 The Table Office 12 Resources 12 E-tabled questions 13 Cut-off point 13 Guidance on Tabling Questions 14 Authentication 16 Authentication technology 18 4 Answering Questions 19 Departmental Resources 19 Guidance for Departments and Ministers when answering questions 21 The Ministerial Code 22 Freedom of Information 23 ‘Unsatisfactory’ answers 25 Late answers 28 5 Conclusion 32 Conclusions and recommendations 33 Formal Minutes relating to the Report 38 Witnesses 39 List of written evidence 39 List of unprinted evidence 40 Reports from the Procedure Committee since 2005 41 3 Summary The use of Written Parliamentary Questions is vital to the scrutiny of Government. Although the continuing increase in the number of questions tabled has placed some strain on the systems that handle WPQs, both in Parliament and in Government, it would be wrong in principle to restrict the number of questions that Members can ask. The high volume of questions is not likely to be a temporary phenomenon, and action should be taken to ensure that these levels of questioning can be smoothly accommodated in the long term. To this end, the resources dedicated to processing questions both in the House of Commons and in Government departments should be increased where necessary to meet demand and to ensure questions are answered quickly and effectively. Cut-off times should be established for the processing of electronically-tabled questions, after which time the question would be treated as having been tabled the following day. This would help to smooth the workload of the Table Office. No such cut-off point should be applied to the processing of questions tabled in person. Concerns were expressed that the rise in the number of questions had been in part caused by Members tabling unnecessary or irrelevant questions. However, there can be a serious motivation behind even the most seemingly trivial question. In all cases the benefit of the doubt must be given to the Member, and the Government should answer the question in accordance with its responsibilities. Members would benefit from a clearer codification of the rules on what can and cannot be tabled. The Table Office should develop additional guidance to assist Members in drafting orderly and effective questions. The system of electronic tabling has been largely successful, but has raised questions over the extent to which Members should delegate the preparation and tabling of questions to their staff. We understand that researchers are likely to have a role in preparing questions, but tabling questions is an exclusive right and responsibility of Members of Parliament. We do not consider that a stronger level of authentication would adequately address this problem, given the variety of legitimate arrangements Members may have in place for preparing and tabling questions within their own offices, but we believe Members must be reminded of their responsibilities in this respect. It should be reiterated to Members on a regular basis that WPQs are a proceeding in Parliament and that they are personally and directly responsible for questions tabled in their name. There is widespread concern that many answers to WPQs are unsatisfactory. We are particularly concerned that, in some cases, information is refused under a WPQ but later granted through a Freedom of Information request. The Government has a duty to answer WPQs accurately and in full. It is unacceptable that some answers fall short of these standards, and the Government must reiterate these responsibilities both in guidance provided to officials and in the Ministerial Code. We propose that, for an experimental one year period, the Procedure Committee take on the role of monitoring unsatisfactory answers referred to us by Members. This will enable the Committee to assess the extent of any problems, and will send a message to 4 Government that if it fails to meet its responsibilities in answering WPQs these shortcomings will be recorded and pursued. We recognise that there is also a problem with answers being received late or not at all. In the event that departments need to give holding answers, the holding answer should include a explanation of the reason for the delay, and a fair indication of when an answer will be provided. We do not believe that a strict formal deadline for answer should be imposed as this could compromise the quality of answers. However, we strongly believe that ordinary WPQs should receive an answer within five working days, and certainly no later than ten working days, and we urge the Government to work to this timetable. We would encourage Members to refer any answers they consider unacceptably late to the Procedure Committee as part of its monitoring experiment. We also recommend that statistics on the timeliness of answers be compiled by Departments and submitted to the Committee, to ensure this aspect of the system is adequately monitored. 5 1 Introduction 1. The Procedure Committee last considered the matter of written parliamentary questions (WPQs) in detail in 2002.1 That Report recommended a daily quota for named day questions, the establishment of an electronic system for tabling questions, and the introduction of tabling facilities during the Summer Recess period. The Report also concluded that it would be wrong in principle to seek to impose any limit on the number of ordinary written questions that could be tabled by a Member.2 2. In the five year interval between that Report and the commencement of our current inquiry, the improvements recommended by the Committee have had time to bed down and become part of the accepted system for tabling questions. Some positive innovations have been made: for example, the introduction of tabling days during the summer recess. We decided to initiate this further inquiry to evaluate the impact of the previous recommendations and to assess new challenges facing the system of WPQs. In particular, the number of WPQs has continued to rise, placing pressure on the resources of both Parliament and Government. We were also aware of frustration among Members with the quality and timeliness of some answers to WPQs. In addition, the introduction of the e- tabling system, although largely successful, has further heightened long-standing concerns over the authentication of tabled questions and the extent of Member participation in the process of drafting and submitting WPQs. 3. In 2007, we heard evidence from the then Leader of the House, Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, and a group of MPs representing opposition and backbench interests: David Drew MP (Labour), Oliver Heald MP (Conservative) and David Laws MP (Liberal Democrat). We then decided to suspend this inquiry while conducting our inquiry into e-petitioning. In 2009, we returned to this subject and brought the inquiry up to date by taking further oral evidence from officials in the Table Office of the House of Commons, and from Chris Bryant MP, the then Deputy Leader of the House. We also invited all Members of the House to submit examples of questions which they felt were answered either inadequately or not at all. We are grateful to all those who took up this invitation.