From long covid and strikes, to two millennia of stress-related sick days, we all know civil servants will take any excuse for time off. Well, today Guido reveals the simplest way for Whitehall employees who are averse to work to avoid it. In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Cabinet Office spelled out their policies for annual leave, and employees going through gender reassignment get an especially good deal:

“Up to 13 weeks special leave with pay may be considered for absences directly related to gender reassignment or intersex variations, in any 12-month rolling period.”

To repeat, that is 13 weeks, or three months, per year.

The obvious question is: how does the Cabinet Office define gender reassignment? Could a civil servant identify one way one year and another the next – just to claim their three months? Could they come up with a new medical procedure to go through every year? Guido would forgive co-conspirators for thinking this was just another case of the government failing to get a grip of their work-shy employees. It is not. Whilst trans employees get 13 weeks per year, paternity leave is 12 days. And for disability related leave… just 5 days.