Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, on how many occasions his Department has received representations from the UK Statistics Authority on his Department's presentation and use of statistics in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Field
Details on the UK Statistics Authority's interventions are published in the correspondence[1], publications[2], and issues log[3] sections of their website since 2010.
The Authority's Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) also carry out regular assessments and systemic reviews, details of which can also be found on the Authority's website[4].
In September 2018, the Authority published the first annual summary of its interventions for the financial year 2017/18[5]. The report for 2018/19 will be published in the autumn.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions the Government has had with the German government on broadening access for other Europeans to its thalidomide fund.
Answered by Alan Duncan
The Government is sympathetic to the care needs of UK Thalidomide survivors, who continue to benefit from the £80 million grant, to be paid over 10 years, which was announced by the Department of Health in 2012.
The FCO has helped the Thalidomide Trust to make its own representations to the German Government regarding the possibility of payments for UK Thalidomide survivors. I met representatives of the Trust to discuss this on several occasions. I raised the issue with my German counterpart Michael Roth on 9 July and with the German Ambassador on 23 July, to whom I handed a letter from Simon Hoare MP to Chancellor Merkel on behalf of the House of Commons All Party Thalidomide Group. In response to these representations, the German government has confirmed that UK Thalidomide victims are eligible to apply for compensation from the Contergan Foundation.
I hope to continue discussions with the German government on how it might be made easier for UK survivors to apply for these funds when I visit Berlin later this month.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of the procurement of an aircraft for use when discharging the duties of his office; and if he will provide details of his Department's travel policy.
Answered by Alan Duncan
There are currently no plans to procure a new aircraft.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office's travel policy is that all staff should travel by the most appropriate means and class of travel according to the demands of their job and to ensure maximum efficiency, remembering that it is public money being spent. Staff must also consider if the journey is necessary and if their aims can be achieved by other means such as video conference, teleconference, or WebEx facilities.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what proportion of his Department's spend on day-to-day goods comprised fair trade products in each of the last eight years.
Answered by Alan Duncan
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office does not centrally hold data on the proportion of expenditure on fair trade products.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, to which organisations his Department has outsourced functions since 2011.
Answered by Alan Duncan
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has outsourced the service integration and management of its Global IT providers via BAE Systems since 2013.
More individual overseas posts might also have put local outsourcing arrangements in place, but we do not hold the data for this centrally, and it would incur disproportionate cost to provide an answer on that basis.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what percentage of workers employed directly by his Department belonged to a trade union in each of the last five years for which data is available.
Answered by Alan Duncan
This information is not held by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Staff pay subscriptions themselves to their trade union.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many (a) full-time staff, (b) part-time staff, (c) temporary staff and (d) any other staff were employed directly by his Department on zero-hours contracts in each of the last eight years.
Answered by Alan Duncan
Our centrally held records do not enable us to differentiate between staff on zero hours contracts and other fee paid officers where a fixed number of hours has been specified in their contracts. We are therefore unable to state how many staff were employed on zero hours contracts over the past eight years.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many and what percentage of employees in his Department worked (a) in departmental accommodation, (b) from home and (c) at any other location in the most recent 12-month period for which data is available.
Answered by Alan Duncan
We do not centrally hold details of the numbers of employees working from home or another remote location. Staff are able to agree flexible working arrangements with their line managers. To provide this would require us to gather information from individuals in the United Kingdom and across the world. The cost of doing this would be disproportionate and would exceed the appropriate limit.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office supports efficient flexible working for all its employees.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, who the lead non-executive director and other non-executive director board members are in his Department.
Answered by Alan Duncan
Details of Foreign and Commonwealth Office non-executives are published on gov.uk.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many and what proportion of his Department's Answers to Written Parliamentary Questions in the 2017-18 Session to date have referred to the information requested not being (a) collected or (b) collated centrally.
Answered by Alan Duncan
In the 2017-18 session The Foreign and Commonwealth Office have answered 19 written parliamentary questions explaining that the requested information was not available on the grounds of it not being collected or held centrally. This is out of a total of 1859 parliamentary questions that have been answered so far. These figures are correct as of 20 December 2017.