Departmental Staff (Disability)

HC Deb 02 February 2004 vol 417 cc614-5W

Mr. Paul Goodman

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will set out the number of employees in his Department who have a disability, broken down by disability type. [148988]

Hilary Benn

As at April 2003, there were 23 members of staff with a disability.

Type of Disability	Number of DFID Staff
Hearing Impairment	8
Visual Impairment	1—
Speech Impairment	1—
Mobility Impairment	5
Physical Impairment	1—
Reduced Physical Capacity	1—
Severe disfigurement	1—
Learning difficulties	1—
Mental Illness	0
Other	0
Total	23
1—Denotes a figure where the number of staff is less than five. The actual numbers in these categories are not published in order to protect the privacy of individual members of staff.

At DFID, staff with disabilities can often fall into more than one of the above categories; where this is the case, they have been assigned to the category relating to their primary disability. DFID is a member of the cross-departmental Cabinet Office Disability Working Group, the primary purpose of which is to improve data collection, monitoring and declaration within the Civil Service.