Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many civil servants in his Department are members of trades unions; how much working hours facility time is claimed by each such civil servant; and what the cost of that facility time is to his Department.

We do not hold records of how many civil servants within the Department for Transport are members of trades unions.

Paid facility time is not available to all union members, it is granted to accredited representatives for the purpose of carrying out trade union duties in accordance with the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

The Cabinet Office publishes data relating to Civil Service facility time on a quarterly basis. The latest data is Quarter 4, 2014 at and is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/trade-union-facility-time. Between January and December 2014, the total number of hours claimed by union representatives as paid facility time was 18,572. The cost to the department was £312,813 which is approximately 0.05% of the total paybill. Prior to the reforms initiated under the previous Government, the annual cost of facility time in the department in 2011-2012 was £1.2 million. Data before 2011 was not published.