The response from the Policy & Resources Committee sets out the scale of Rule 14 written questions – the formal mechanism by which deputies put questions to committees and receive published replies. Questions to P&R alone rose from 64 in 2024 to 143 in 2025, and had already reached 145 by the start of September 2026. Other committees have seen sharp swings too, with Environment & Infrastructure fielding 28 in 2024 and 35 so far this year.
But the FoI also lays bare how little the States monitors the process. There is no central log consolidating the questions across government; officer time and cost are not routinely recorded; the involvement of legal advisers, communications staff or senior officers is not centrally logged; and no documents have been produced since January 2024 for the specific purpose of monitoring response times, workload or compliance. Questions, the committee said, are simply handled as ‘incoming correspondence’ by each committee and service area.
And there is no agreed electronic system for recording them. Asked for a structured data extract, P&R said the States ‘does not have an agreed electronic format for the recording of Rule 14 questions’.
A small number of deputies account for much of the workload. Figures for questions to P&R alone show that Deputy Neil Inder submitted 31 last year.
In the current political term Deputy David Goy asked 40 questions in 2025 and a further 15 this year, and Deputy Rob Curgenven, largely in the run up to the tax debate, filed 64 questions to the senior committee this year.
Other prolific authors of written questions include new deputy Ross Le Brun, who has clocked up 49 questions in his few months in the States, and experienced Gavin St Pier, who has 100 to his name over the past three years. Deputy Chris Le Tissier also asked a blizzard of questions to a number of committees in the run up to the 2025 election, where he lost his seat.
Several other deputies, but far from all, have submitted questions in smaller numbers.
Policy & Resources is ahead by far of the committees handling the most questions. Since 2024 more than 350 individual questions has crossed its desk at Frossard House.
Over the same time frame Health & Social Care has faced 115; Home Affairs 111, the States Trading Supervisory Board 87, Education, Sport & Culture 86, and Environment & Infrastructure 79.
Committees report answering close to all questions on time. P&R recorded 94% within the rules in 2024 and 100% in both 2025 and 2026.
But compliance is measured against the 15 clear-day deadline, including any extension agreed by the presiding officer, which can stretch the limit to 30 days. The longest single response recorded by P&R took 56 clear days in 2024. It was described as an outlier following an agreed extension and extended discussions with the questioner.
The publication of figures detailing officer time spent on these questions is inconsistent.
The FoI shows that only four published responses since January 2024 have included details of staff time or costs – two from 2024, including one costed at £320 and another at ‘just under 80 hours’, and two E&I responses in August 2026, of 19.5 and 7.5 hours.
The States has no policy governing when such figures are published, and the decision rests with each committee.
Under a change agreed by the States in 2018, every Rule 14 response must now be approved by the responding committee, meaning each is signed off by the committee president and all its members before publication. Responses are also ‘normally shared with communications officers for their awareness’.
The committee stressed that parliamentary questions ‘play an important role’. But it also pointed to growing pressure, noting that the complexity of questions had increased, ‘with a growing number requiring detailed investigation, cross-departmental input, analysis of large volumes of information, and careful validation before responses can be published’.