Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of days of work that were lost due to asthma in the UK in each year since 2010 for which there are data available.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
The Lord Kamall
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
21 March 2025
Dear Lord Kamall,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking for an estimate of the number of days of work that were lost due to asthma in the UK in each year since 2010 for which there are data available (HL5962).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) collects information on the labour market status of individuals through the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is a survey of people resident in households in the UK. The LFS also collects information on whether respondents have missed days off work due to illness and/or injury.
Unfortunately, we do not collect information regarding the type of sickness at a level of detail to identify those suffering from asthma specifically, but we can provide the number of working days lost due to respiratory conditions.
We publish estimates of the number of working days lost through sickness absence, including the number of working days lost due to respiratory conditions, in our Sickness absence in the UK labour market: 2022 article1. This article is due to be updated to include 2023 and 2024 estimates on 1 May 2025. This update will also include revisions to estimates from 2019 to 2022. We will send the updated data to you once it has been published.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
Table 1 contains LFS estimates of the number, and percentage, of working days lost due to respiratory conditions from 2012 to 2022, the latest data currently available.
Table 1: Number and percentage of working days lost due to respiratory conditions, between 2012 and 2022.
| Number of working days lost due to respiratory conditions (millions) | Percentage of working days lost due to respiratory conditions (% of all working days lost) |
2022 | 16.2 | 8.7 |
2021 | 10.0 | 6.7 |
2020 | 6.4 | 5.5 |
2019 | 5.6 | 4.0 |
2018 | 3.9 | 2.8 |
2017 | 3.7 | 2.8 |
2016 | 5.4 | 3.9 |
2015 | 5.4 | 3.9 |
2014 | 6.8 | 5.0 |
2013 | 5.8 | 4.4 |
2012 | 4.4 | 3.3 |