§ Mr. HammondTo ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office by what percentage he estimates that the recorded number of disabled civil servants will change as a result of the proposed change in methodology used to calculate the number of disabled staff in the Civil Service to the percentage of those responding to a questionnaire. [154110]
§ Mr. AlexanderThe Cabinet Office is consulting on a change to the methodology for collecting and calculating staffing figures on disability in order to improve the robustness of the data and to allow better comparisons with other sources of data on disability, such as the Labour Force Survey.
Table 1 sets out the difference that the proposed methodology would have on previously published figures on the basis of information currently held. However, this is unlikely to provide a full picture of the impact of the change as data for previous years is insufficient to be able to distinguish between staff who have declared they do not have a disability and those who have not made any declaration. This information would be collected in future if the proposed change in methodology goes ahead.
1569WIf we proceed with the proposed change, disability figures based on the old calculation method will be published alongside the new method in the short-term so that year-on-year comparisons can continue be made.
Table 1: As at April Total disabled Total non-disabled Published percentage Revised percentage using new method 2003 19,510 355,630 3.6 5.2 2002 18,650 334,940 3.6 5.3 2001 15,520 364,330 3.1 4.1 2000 18,480 410,950 3.7 4.3 Note:
Disability information for MOD is only available for 2000, for later years the data are not provided (but their staff totals were used in the denominator for the Civil Service as a whole).
Source:
Civil Service Statistics Website (http://www.civil-service.gov.uk/ statistics/css.htm)