Question to the Wales Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, what estimate he has made of the number of days lost due to staff absences in his Department as a result of (a) physical ill health, (b) mental ill health, (c) stress and (d) anxiety disorders in each of the last five years.

The Office of the Secretary of State for Wales is not an employer in its own right. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) provides employment services on our behalf, including collection of absence data.

The physical and mental wellbeing of our staff is crucially important to the department and staff have access to all MoJ employee services that help to sustain physical and mental wellbeing, including Occupational Health and a 24-hour employee assistance helpline.

The information below outlines the number of days lost due to staff absences as a result of (a) physical ill health, (b) mental ill health, (c) stress and (d) anxiety disorders. MoJ categorise stress and anxiety disorders as mental ill health. We have therefore extracted the relevant data from (b) and recorded these in (c) and (d) below. Please note that this data is collected by calendar year and therefore data is not yet available for 2018.