Thank you, Mr Speaker. Hon Davidson, as I indicated in my reply to your deputy, the hon Ellis, in this House on 19 August this year, the Rules of this House provide mechanisms for ensuring that questions to the executive are answered. As these Rules are adopted by this House and not the executive, I believe it would be up to the National Assembly to decide whether there is a need to tighten up these Rules or to strengthen them in some way.
The hon Ellis made a suggestion during that exchange in August that if Ministers did not reply to their written questions within the time limits, they should have to stand up in this House and explain why not. I indicated in my response that if the National Assembly decided to introduce this rule, I would support it. I am not aware of such a proposal having been made to the National Assembly Rules Committee.
As I indicated in my reply to hon Ellis' question, as Leader of Government Business, it is both my duty and my responsibility to ensure that Cabinet Ministers are reminded of their obligation and I do so by regularly reporting, in detail, to each meeting of Cabinet, the number of questions each Minister has outstanding. Even this morning I did that.
I do that religiously and I am quite confident that we will arrive at a point where there will be no outstanding questions to Ministers. We are, on an ongoing basis, reminding Ministers of outstanding questions. We supply them with the number of the question, the date and everything, and I'm quite confident that there will be an improvement. Thank you.