Departmental Training

Mr. Baron
To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many overseas training courses were attended by his Department's civil servants in the latest period for which figures are available; how many civil servants attended each course; and what the total cost to the public purse was of each course.

Mr. McFadden
No training courses overseas are funded from the budgets that are held centrally within the Department. The information requested is not held centrally for training budgets that are devolved to individual units in the Department and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

Mr. Graham Stuart
To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many (a) away days and (b) conferences that took place outside his Department’s building attended by civil servants in his Department there have been since its inception; and what the cost was of each.

Mr. McFadden
The Department does not centrally record details of (a) away days and (b) conferences that took place outside of the Department’s building attended by civil servants. To obtain this information would require searching through four departmental and IT systems and entail disproportionate costs.

Away days are important for bringing people together, team building, reviewing work priorities and development of staff.