Ministry of Defence: Correspondence
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many and what proportion of items of correspondence from Parliamentarians received by (a) his Department, (b) him and (c) his Ministers in each month since August 2024 have not yet received a substantive response.
Answered by Luke Pollard
We are committed to ensuring Government responses to correspondence are timely, accurate, and high quality.
All correspondence from Parliamentarians to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) is processed centrally. Whether an individual item of correspondence was originally received by an individual Minister is not recorded.
The number of items of correspondence received each month and the number and proportion awaiting a response as at 6 February 2025 are as follows.
Date Received | Number Received | Number Awaiting Response | Proportion Awaiting Response |
August 2024 | 204 | 2 | 1% |
September 2024 | 229 | 3 | 1% |
October 2024 | 311 | 6 | 2% |
November 2024 | 300 | 11 | 4% |
December 2024 | 258 | 16 | 6% |
January 2025 | 301 | 202 | 67% |
February 2025 | 29 | 28 | 97% |
For the small proportion of correspondence which are late, these often pertain to complex cases, and MOD has the processes in place to ensure these will be answered as soon as possible.
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