To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform how many working days have been lost due to sickness amongst employees for which his Department is and its predecessor department was responsible for each year since 1997. (248875)

Cabinet Office has 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 first report covers the calendar year 2007. It indicates 6.1 average working days lost per employee due to sickness.

Sickness absence data for the Department's predecessor, the Department of Trade and Industry, for 2006-07, 2005, 2004 and 2003, including the average number of days taken as sick leave, are published on the public 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 the cost of producing these would be disproportionate to the benefit to be derived.