To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many performance reviews were undertaken in respect of staff of (a) his Department and (b) its agencies in each of the last five years; in how many cases performance was rated as unsatisfactory or below; how many staff left as a direct result of such a rating; and what percentage of full-time equivalent staff this represented. (313836)

DEFRA and its Executive Agencies have undertaken annual staff performance reviews for all permanent staff over the last five financial years. These comprise formal reviews at mid-year and end-year and informal reviews on an ad hoc basis. Staff appraisal information is held as individual records; this means that collated data cannot be provided without incurring disproportionate cost.

A review of 'unsatisfactory' or similar rating does not directly lead to dismissal: DEFRA and its Executive Agencies have a specific process in place to manage under or poor performance which can be implemented at any time of the year and is not necessarily triggered by the performance marking.

The number of staff dismissals in DEFRA and its Executive Agencies, due to underperformance, over the last five years is in the table and also expressed as a percentage of FTE staff.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what estimate he has made of the proportion of staff of (a) his Department and (b) its agencies managed out in the last five years who remain working in the public sector. (313856)

The term 'managed out' is not used within the civil service, so we have considered this question as applying to redundancies.

Neither DEFRA nor its agencies record whether staff who have been made redundant have remained working in the public sector. We are therefore unable to provide the estimate requested.