Stress levels rise across Whitehall under Gordon Brown (but not at the Treasury now he's left!)

Stress levels in Government have soared since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, official figures show.

Far more civil servants are taking time off for 'depression, anxiety and potential stress-related problems' than under Tony Blair.

But the Treasury, which was vacated last June by Mr Brown, has seen stress levels plummet.

Stories from inside Downing Street tell of Mr Brown upsetting secretaries, reducing his closest advisers to tears and throwing mobile phones at walls.

The figures on Government stress, obtained by the Conservatives, would appear to back up this anecdotal evidence.

Comparing the last six months of Mr Blair's premiership with the first six months of Mr Brown's, the number of days lost to stress-related illness shot up by 11,000.

The true figure could be even higher because only nine government departments answered the question.

Mr Brown took over as Prime Minister on June 27 last year.

In the last six months of 2007, almost half a million days were lost due to stress-related illness across the nine departments.

The figures show that the number of sick days attributed to stress soared by 70 per cent at the Department for Communities and Local Government, and by 80 per cent at the Department for International Development.

More days off were also taken at the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Transport and the Ministry of Justice in the last six months of the year.

Just two departments reported that the number had declined.

One was the Treasury, which Mr Brown left in June.

In the first half of the year, there were 999 days lost, compared with 639 after Alistair Darling became Chancellor  -  a reduction of a third.

This is despite problems such as the Northern Rock crisis and the loss of data discs containing the details of 25million child benefit claimants.

The other department to see a reduction in the levels of stress was the Foreign Office, run by Mr Brown's potential rival for the leadership, David Miliband.

Tory Cabinet Office spokesman Francis Maude said: 'We knew that Gordon Brown has made life difficult for taxpayers, but now we know that civil servants are also suffering from the Brown effect. Perhaps he should ask David Miliband for lessons on leadership.'

The Cabinet Office, which includes staff at Number Ten, declined to reply to the stress survey, saying it would be too expensive.

Other high-profile ministries, such as Health, Schools and Culture, also did not answer, and some departments gave only the overall total for 2007.

Among the departments which broke down the figures into the two halves of the year, there were 345,972 days lost under Tony Blair and 356,762 under Gordon Brown.

The Tories estimate that, across all departments, there were around 485,000 days lost to stress during Mr Brown's first six months in office.

One Labour MP recently revealed that Mr Brown got through three mobile phones in one week after throwing them against the wall in anger.

There have been reports of him shouting at the Downing Street typists  -  who are known as the 'Garden Girls'.

He is also said to have reduced his former director of political strategy, Spencer Livermore, to tears after he blamed him for last year's cancelled election fiasco.