PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Research (23 March 2015)

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Written Statement of 20 March 2014, HCWS438, on what date each of the reports listed was received by his Department; on what date the last payment was made to each research organisation commissioned to produce each of those reports; and for what reason each of those reports had not previously been published.

Asked by:
Mr Clive Betts (Labour)

The attached table shows the details of the last payment dates for the reports listed in the Written Ministerial Statement of 20 March 2014, HCWS438.

Final payments are associated with the receipt of draft final outputs from research projects. These reports are from research commissioned under the previous administration, and have continued under the current administration. Reports are not published until the research work is complete and final checks are made. This includes quality assurance and in some cases peer review of the final research outputs which inevitably delays the publication process.

As I explained in my Statement, this Government inherited £26 million of unpublished research reports from the last Administration. I do not have access to Ministerial papers of the last Administration to ascertain the rationale for this.

Since 2010 in the interests of transparency, we have been working through the backlog of over 150 unpublished research reports commissioned under the previous Administration. These have been published in groups over this period.

Answered by:
Kris Hopkins (Conservative)
26 March 2015