Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many and what proportion of officials in his Department took sick leave for reasons relating to stress in the last 12 months; what proportion that leave was of total sick leave taken in his Department; and what the cost was to his Department of officials taking sick leave over that period.

Based on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's (FCO) human resources management system, 41 FCO UK-based staff took sick leave related to stress in 2018. This does not include staff who were absent but no sick leave reason is recorded against them. This accounts for 0.85 per cent of FCO UK-based staff using our headcount figure as of 31 December 2018 (4,839). Sick leave for reasons related to stress in 2018 accounted for 10.5 per cent of total recorded sick days, and equated to 0.3 Average Working Days Lost per person. The cost to the paybill of all sick leave taken by FCO UK-based staff in 2018 was £3,386,787. Of this, the cost of sick leave taken for stress-related reasons was £355,898.