Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many officials of her Department have opted out of the EU Working Time Directive.

The number of officials that have opted out of the EU Working Time Directive is not collected centrally by the Human Resources directorate in the Department.

Individual line managers within the department make the decision at a local level and also hold the supporting documentation. In order for us to gather this information, we would need to contact all line managers to collect this data and then collate it, which would be to a disproportionate cost.