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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many young people aged eighteen or younger have undertaken work experience in his Department in the last 12 months; and what proportion of those young people were (a) girls and (b) boys from state schools.

The Civil Service aims to increase opportunities for people of all backgrounds and create a Civil Service fit for 21st century Britain through work experience, internships and apprenticeship schemes.

The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs, as the department would have to ask each of the individual business areas for their local records of people on work experience.