To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many sick days members of his Department have taken in each month of each year since 1997. (315971)

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is committed to reducing sickness absence. The average number of days sick leave by UK staff has decreased from 8.9 days in 1997 to 3.5 days in 2009. Per capita sickness absence in the FCO has been consistently below the public sector average.

We do not keep records centrally of sick leave taken by locally-engaged staff members. This information could be obtained only at a disproportionate cost.

Data collection since 1997 has been complicated by the introduction of new Pay and management information systems. It is therefore possible that the figures given below do not reflect consistent recording methods.

Annual figures are available from 2000 and monthly figures from April 2006:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many staff in his Department have had five or more periods of sickness absence of less than five days in two or more of the last three years. (316464)

The number of staff who had five or more periods of sickness absence of less than five days in two or more of the last three years was 86 out of around 5,500 UK based civil servants (this figure includes staff in FCO services). Central records of sickness leave are kept only for UK-based civil servants within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. No central records of sickness leave are kept for locally engaged staff working overseas. Contacting all overseas posts to gather this information would incur disproportionate cost.