3. Written Parliamentary Questions are a vital component of the parliamentary system and serve several valuable functions. They enable Members to:

• obtain information that is not readily available through other means;

• press the Government to take action or draw a specific issue to its attention;

• place an issue — and the Government’s response — on the public record; and

• seek clarity on Government policy and any assessments or aims that underlie it.

A well-functioning WPQ system also benefits the Government, helping it to identify emerging issues and concerns among MPs and the wider public.

4. The most significant recent development in the use of Written Parliamentary Questions has been a marked increase in their volume. Sessional returns show that between 2010 and 2024, an average of 296 WPQs were tabled per sitting day. By contrast, data from Parliament’s API indicates that in the 2024–26 Session to date[1], the average has risen to 455 WPQs per sitting day. This represents a substantial increase on the pre-2024 average and exceeds even the peak levels recorded in June 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.[2]

5. There is no evidence that Sessions immediately following a general election are associated with higher volumes of WPQs, as Figure 1 shows.[3] There is therefore no reason to assume that the current high volume of WPQs is a temporary phenomenon that will diminish as the Parliament progresses.

Figure 1: Average number of WPQs tabled per sitting day by Session, 2010-2026

6. However, the sessional average for 2024-26 understates the scale of the increase because it masks a pronounced upwards trend within the Session itself. As might be expected following a general election with an unusually high turnover of Members, the first few months of the new Parliament saw relatively low numbers of WPQs per sitting day (see Figure 2). By October 2024, however, volumes had risen above the pre-2024 average and have remained consistently higher in every month since, with a clear upwards trajectory.

Figure 2: Average number of WPQs tabled per sitting day by month, 2024-26 Session

7. Dividing the 2024-2026 Session into three six-month periods (July–December 2024, January–June 2025, and July–December 2025) shows that the use of WPQs has accelerated as the Session has progressed (see Figure 3). During July–December 2025, the average rose to 604 WPQs per sitting day, more than double the pre-2024 average. October 2025 alone recorded an exceptional 777 WPQs per sitting day, and historic House of Commons Library data suggest that the 9,325 WPQs submitted that month may represent the highest monthly total since at least 2010.[4]

8. It is difficult to identify a single explanation for the overall rise in WPQs, and particularly for the rapid acceleration observed during this Session. However, the following factors — though not easily quantifiable — may have contributed:

1. Pressure from internet and social media: Online platforms have increased the pressure on Members to demonstrate visible and measurable parliamentary activity, for example by highlighting comparative WPQ statistics on sites such as TheyWorkForYou.

2. Members’ staff: Growth in the number of Members’ staff has increased capacity to research, draft and submit WPQs.

3. House authorities: There may be less resistance from House authorities to inadmissible questions, possibly linked to the shift from in-person tabling to e-tabling.

4. Ease of submission: The increasingly widespread use of the user-friendly e-tabling facility has made it much easier for Members and their staff to submit WPQs.

5. Repeat or follow-up questions: Where answers are perceived as incomplete or low quality, Members may be more likely to table similar or follow-up questions.

6. Artificial intelligence (AI): AI and related technologies enable Members and their staff to research and draft WPQs more quickly and at greater scale.

7. Concentrated increase: A small group of Members is responsible for a disproportionate share of the increase in WPQs. Sky News has suggested that ten MPs were responsible for 20% of the WPQs submitted in the July–December 2025 period.[5]

9. There is also evidence of increased use of other parliamentary mechanisms. The 2024-26 Session has so far seen the highest number of Early Day Motions (EDMs) per sitting day since at least 2010, at an average of 11.1 per sitting day, compared with a 2010-24 average of 8.5 per sitting day (see Figure 4).

10. As with WPQs, however, the sessional average masks a strong upwards trend within the Session itself. When the Session is again divided into three six-month periods, the number of EDMs tabled per sitting day in the final six-month period is 80% higher than the 2010-24 average.

11. The Committee may therefore wish to consider whether a shared underlying cause is driving the rise in both WPQ and EDM activity.

12. The use of WPQs also varies significantly between Members. In the final six months of 2025, 524 Members submitted at least one WPQ. However, a relatively small number of Members were responsible for a large share of the overall total.

• Ten Members (two percent of all WPQ submitters) were responsible for 22% of all WPQs.

• 20 Members (four percent of all WPQ submitters) were responsible for 35% of all WPQs.

13. However, a comparison of the first and final six months of 2025 shows that the proportion of WPQs submitted by the ten highest submitters remained broadly stable.[6] This may indicate that the increase in WPQ activity represents a broad rise in parliamentary activity, rather than being driven solely by a small group of particularly prolific Members. This interpretation is supported by the rise in the median number of WPQs per sitting day, which increased from 0.41 to 0.48 between the two six-month periods.

14. Unsurprisingly, opposition Members make greater use of WPQs as a scrutiny tool. Of the 20 Members who tabled the most parliamentary questions in the final six months of 2025 — the period that gives the clearest indication of current practice — 11 were Conservatives (including several frontbenchers), five were Liberal Democrats, two were Independents (both formerly Reform UK), one was from Reform UK, and one was a Democratic Unionist. No Labour Member featured among the top 20.

15. On average, Labour Members who submitted at least one WPQ tabled 34 questions during this period, compared with an average of 124 among non-Labour members — nearly four times as many. The Committee may therefore wish to consider whether any additional restrictions on the use of WPQs could have a disproportionate impact on scrutiny by opposition Members.

16. Where a Member is dissatisfied with an answer, they will often table a follow-up question beginning “Pursuant to the Answer of [Date] to Question [Number]…”. If follow-up questions were a significant driver of the increase in WPQs during this Session, we would expect the proportion of WPQs using this formulation to have risen over time. In practice, however, the share of such WPQs has remained broadly stable across the Session. Such questions accounted for 5.4 percent of all WPQs in the first six months of the Session, rose to 7.9 percent in the subsequent six months, and fell to 6.8 percent in the final six months.

17. Since 2013, the House of Commons has operated a quota limiting Members to up to 20 WPQs per sitting day that may be submitted via the House’s e-tabling facility, whether Ordinary or Named Day questions. A Member may also table no more than five Named Day questions per sitting day by any method. No limit applies to Ordinary WPQs submitted to the Table Office in hard copy.

18. The current e-tabling limit has its origins in three Procedure Committee reports published between 2010 and 2012. In the Committee’s 2nd Report of Session 2010-12, it recommended the introduction of a daily quota of five e-tabled WPQs (whether Named Day or Ordinary). The Committee decided not to apply this limit at the end of extended recesses. The quota was then introduced on a trial basis for three months.

19. In its 8th Report of Session 2010-12, the Committee reviewed the trial and recommended that the quota be made permanent, alongside the introduction of a “basket” system that allowed Members to table more than five questions on a single day, with those in excess released in batches of five on subsequent sitting days. These restrictions were made permanent in April 2012. However, just eight months later, in its 3rd Report of Session 2012-13, the Committee recommended increasing the quota to 20 e-tabled questions per day, after some Members expressed dissatisfaction with the five-question limit.

20. It is important to recall the Committee’s original purpose in recommending the introduction of a quota in the first of those reports. The Committee made clear that it was primarily concerned about the high volume of WPQs being submitted and, in particular:

• that high-quality questions were being overwhelmed by the sheer number submitted;

• that the volume imposed disproportionate financial and administrative burdens on House and Government officials;

• that questions were increasingly being drafted and tabled by Members’ staff rather than by Members themselves; and

• that the role of parliamentary questions had narrowed in an era of greater access to government information, meaning their overall number ought not to be rising.

21. The Committee stated explicitly that its objective was to see “fewer, better questions tabled”. In terms of reducing overall numbers, the current 20-question quota has clearly failed to achieve that objective. An average of 369 WPQs per sitting day were tabled in the 2009-10 Session — the Session immediately preceding the Committee’s initial report. As noted earlier, an average of 604 questions per sitting day were tabled in the final six months of 2025, representing an increase of 64% on the level the Committee had sought to reduce.

22. A lower quota would undoubtedly affect the parliamentary activity of a small number of Members, but the vast majority would be unaffected. In the final six months of 2025, only eight Members tabled more than 10 WPQs per sitting day and only 21 tabled more than five. Provided that their questions were distributed more evenly across sitting days, most Members could therefore remain within a reduced quota of 10 — or even five — questions per day.

23. It should also be emphasised that WPQ volumes in the last six months were unusually high. If Members were to return to the levels observed in the first six months of 2025, only three Members would average more than 10 questions per sitting day, and only 15 would exceed five. This suggests that a reduced quota would not prevent most Members from submitting as many questions as they were doing in the very recent past.

24. Evidence submitted by Ruxandra Serban shows that in the parliaments of other comparable democratic countries[7] where limits on written questions apply, those limits are substantially lower than the UK’s current 20-per-day e-tabling limit. The UK would therefore not be an international outlier were it to adopt a significantly lower daily limit. Nor would the House of Commons be an outlier within Parliament itself: the House of Lords applies a much lower quota of six written questions per sitting day, subject to a maximum of 12 per sitting week.

25. Because the quota only applies to e-tabled questions, a Member may, in theory, submit dozens or even hundreds of WPQs in hard copy on a single sitting day. It is unclear why the Committee originally considered it necessary to limit the quota to e-tabled questions alone. In its initial 2011 report, the Committee argued that the e-tabling facility “can be viewed separately from other means by which Members may table questions in hard copy direct to the Table Office” and “that restrictions on e-tabling could have a significant impact on the number of questions tabled”. However, it did not explain why this justified confining the quota to that one method of submission alone. Since an overwhelming majority of questions are now submitted electronically, and Members increasingly choose not to attend the Table Office in person to submit them, maintaining a distinction between e-tabled and hard-copy questions appears increasingly outdated.

26. In evidence to the Modernisation Committee, the House Administration stated that “the ability to table unlimited numbers of hard copy questions places strain on the Table Office and has a consequential impact on the timing and quality of answers”. Our analysis supports this concern. During this Session there have been 51 instances in which a single MP tabled more than 50 WPQs on a single day. Of these, 35 occurred on the working day immediately before the end of a recess, when questions submitted during the recess are formally tabled and the e-tabling quota does not apply. However, the remaining 16 instances took place on days when the House was sitting, indicating that in-person tabling is sometimes used to submit substantially more than 20 questions.

27. The 35 instances in which a single Member tabled more than 50 questions at the end of a recess also raise questions about whether the continued exemption of recess periods from the quota remains appropriate. The scale of the issue is, moreover, certainly understated by these figures. Evidence provided from the Table Office as part of this inquiry indicates that backlogs during the 2025 summer and conference recesses were so large that a number of questions could not be processed and formally tabled until later sitting days.

[1] As of 21 January 2026.

[2] C. Watson, Written Parliamentary Questions: The June Peak, House of Commons Library Insight, 15 July 2020, chart titled ‘Number of WPQs tabled’

[3] The 2017-19 Session includes the data from the very brief 2019 Session.

[4] C. Watson, Written Parliamentary Questions: The June Peak, House of Commons Library Insight, 15 July 2020, para. 1

[5] S. Coates, ‘Number of written questions to government departments doubles in a year’, Sky News, 7 January 2026

[6] The share of WPQs tabled by the ten highest submitters increased slightly from 22.4% to 22.6%, while the share accounted for by the 20 highest submitters fell from 37.8% to 35.8%.

[7] This includes all of the countries that Ruxandra Serban describes in her evidence as having a quota on written questions: Canada (four on the Order Paper at any one time), France (52 per session), Germany (four per month), Norway (two per week), and Northern Ireland (five per day).