Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many staff in his Department have formal arrangements to work from home during the covid-19 outbreak.

Defence's policy is that all employees should work from home during COVID-19 unless their work is business critical which requires them to be in the workplace. The Department believes that it is vital to support staff to enable them to meet their work and family commitments, particularly if they are caring for children following school closures, or other relative or friend. Advice and guidance on working remotely/flexibly is available in a toolkit; guidance in a "Coronavirus pandemic - working from home guidance" as well as; in a series of FAQs which are regularly updated. Employees working from home can request the use of a laptop, or, if they have a reasonable adjustment, specialist equipment which their line manager will make best endeavours that it is delivered. The key issue for Defence is to ensure that critical business continues as usual, and that its employees can meet their objectives.

I am unable to give you figures on staff with formal arrangements: when scoping the relevant information for your request, it was established that in order to locate, retrieve and extract information in scope of the question would exceed the disproportionate cost threshold (DCT). The request exceeds the DCT as the department does not hold this information centrally and it would require reviewing the data for each directorate within the Department, its agencies and Frontline Commands individually.