Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the Average Working Days Lost was for civil servants in her Department (a) from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds and (b) recording themselves as White in the calendar year (a) 2019 and (b) 2020.

The Department only holds information relating to its own staff. Average working days lost figures are calculated on rolling year to date basis, therefore the following data relate to the year to 31 December. Due to the way that data is structured in our systems we do not hold this data in the format requested and it could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

Declaration of ethnicity is not mandatory, however as at December 2020, 87.8 per cent of staff have declared their ethnicity.