To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what estimate he has made of the average annual (a) days lost per employee and (b) cost to business due to stress and stress related business. (187627)

The average number of working days lost per employee by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, (formerly the Department of Trade and Industry), including UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) and Office of Manpower Economics (OME), attributed to stress-related conditions for the period January 2007 to December 2007 is 0.72.

The Department does not routinely calculate the average annual cost of stress. As this would involve manually investigating employee sickness records and pay details on an individual basis, the cost of doing this would be disproportionate to the benefit to be derived.