Speeches

Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-05-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers for what reasons have taken long-term sick leave in each of the last five years.

Andrew Selous

Long-term sick leave is defined within the Civil service as periods of absence of more than 28 calendar days. The number of Band 3-5 prison officers to have taken at least one period of long-term sick leave in each of the last five years for which information is available is shown in the table below.

Table: Number of Band 3-5 Officers who had an incidence of sick leave of 28 or more days, by type of sickness, 2010/11 to 2014/15

Type of Sickness

2010-11

2011-12

2012-13

2013-14

2014-15

Blood and Blood-Forming Organs

~

~

~

10

10

Circulatory System

120

130

120

120

110

Digestive System

150

140

140

110

90

Ear and Mastoid Process

20

10

20

10

10

Endocrine, Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases

10

20

20

20

~

Eye and Adnexa

20

20

20

10

20

Genitourinary System

60

60

50

70

60

Infective and Parasitic Diseases

50

40

50

40

50

Injury and Poisoning

300

310

300

380

380

Mental and Behavioural Disorders

840

850

850

960

920

Musculoskeletal System

920

800

730

610

550

Neoplasms

40

40

40

40

40

Nervous System and Sense Organs

60

70

70

60

50

Pregnancy Complications

50

40

40

30

30

Respiratory System

50

50

60

40

40

Skin and Subcutaneous Tissue

20

20

30

20

10

Symptoms Ill-Defined

670

750

790

790

680

Not Recorded

80

80

90

80

160

Grand Total

3490

3430

3410

3390

3200

Where an officer has more than one period of long-term absence within a year for the same reason, they are counted once. Where multiple absences were for different reasons they are counted more than once.

All figures are rounded to the nearest 10, with numbers ending in 5 rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time, to ensure consistency of reporting. However the database itself is dynamic, and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate, and to present unrounded figures would be to overstate the accuracy of the figures. Rounding to 10 accurately depicts the level of certainty that is held with these figures.

Totals are formed from unrounded parts prior to rounding. For this reason, rounded totals may not equal the sum of their rounded parts.

~ denotes suppressed values of 5 or fewer. Low numbers are suppressed, in conjunction with the rounding policy to prevent disclosure in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 1998.