To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many working days have been lost due to sickness amongst employees for which his Department and its predecessor were responsible for each year since 1997.

Cabinet Office has recently introduced a revised format for reporting sickness absence statistics across the civil service. The new format was introduced at the end of March 2008 and the reports now cover the period up to 31 March 2008. The figure for annual average working days lost due to sickness in my Department up to that date is 9.6 per staff member. The annual number of days lost 20,021.2.

The Department was formed as part of the Machinery of Government changes on 28 June 2007. Sickness absence data for the Department's predecessor, the Department for Education and Skills, for 2006/07, 2005 and 2004, including the average number of days taken as sick leave is published on the civil service website:

http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/about/statistics/sickness.asp along with data for other Departments and agencies.

Earlier sickness data are not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.