Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department has banned the use of DeepSeek.
Answered by Catherine West
The Government has a robust set of security policies in place to oversee how information is handled, within our buildings, on our IT, and by our staff. We keep these policies under constant review to ensure they are applicable to new technologies. The AI Playbook for the UK Government outlines that only corporately assured Generative AI tools should be used to process HMG information. Everyone who works in Government has a duty of confidentiality and a responsibility to safeguard any government information or data that they process, access or share, and all government departments are required to meet a range of mandatory security standards.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what proportion of food procured by his Department is sourced in the UK.
Answered by Catherine West
To date the Government has not held information on where publicly procured food is sourced from. Starting right away, for the first time ever, this government will review the food currently bought in the public sector to determine the standards that it is meeting, where it is bought from and look to introduce monitoring for transparency and accountability within those supply chains to ultimately get the best food for the consumer.
This work will be a significant first step to inform any future changes to public sector food procurement policies as we want to help make it an equal playing field for British producers to bid into the £5 billion spent each year on public sector catering contracts.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what estimate he has made of the (a) amount and (b) proportion of the overseas aid budget that will be spent in the UK in each of the next three years.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Home Secretary is committed to ensuring that asylum costs fall and has already acted. The Government has taken measures to reduce the asylum backlog, reform the asylum accommodation system to end the use of expensive accommodation in the next Spending Review period and increase detention capacity to facilitate more asylum removals.
Whilst there will always be volatility in asylum forecasts, we expect these decisions to drive down overall in-donor refugee costs over the next Spending Review and the Home Office are well incentivised to deliver this.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many officials from his Department attended the World Economic Forum 2025.
Answered by Catherine West
No Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office officials attended the 2025 World Economic Forum as delegates. The Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization, United Nations and other International Organisations attended to accompany Ministers and members of his team based in Geneva provided support to the HMG delegation.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, for what purposes the British Council has used artificial intelligence in the last 12 months.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The British Council has incorporated Artificial Intelligence (AI) into its work to optimise productivity and efficiency. Examples include supply chain management and predictive analytics, automation of recruitment activities, analysis of grant applications, and the use of tools such as Copilot, Perplexity AI and ChatGPT in workplace activities.
The British Council released a commercial AI capability last year where AI is used to assess and adapt to English language learners' proficiency in real time. This capability will be incorporated into new learning and assessment initiatives.
The British Council is operationally independent from the UK Government.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, for what purposes (a) Ministers and (b) officials in his Department have used AI in the last 12 months.
Answered by Catherine West
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform diplomatic practice and the FCDO's delivery, enhancing our diplomatic impact and increasing individual productivity and corporate efficiency.
AI is already integrated into many commodity products and devices. Ministers do not currently use specific FCDO provided AI augmented tools in their work. Officials already use a range of FCDO provided AI augmented tools in their work to support information analysis and national security activities. The FCDO participated in the cross-HMG pilot of Microsoft Copilot and is trialling an AI agent to intelligently sign-post written Consular enquiries on GOV.UK. The secure and responsible adoption of AI is a key component of the FCDO's multi-year Digital, Data and Cyber Security Strategy.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he has made an estimate of the amount of overseas development assistance funds that have been spent on providing abortion services in the last five years.
Answered by Anneliese Dodds
We report spend in line with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development and Assistance Committee sector codes which do not track spend specifically for abortion services which are part of a wider package of women's healthcare. FCDO support to safe abortion services is within what is permitted by national laws, as well as providing life-saving treatment for women who have had unsafe abortions.
The FCDO annually reports on Official Development Assistance (ODA) expenditure via the Statistics on International Development publications [https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-on-international-development]. All of our programmatic spend data can be found on the Devtracker website [https://devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/].
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking to ensure that active funding programmes focused on supporting farmers and farming communities abroad is value for money.
Answered by Anneliese Dodds
The FCDO employs robust systems and frameworks to ensure we achieve high standards of value for money and spend British taxpayers' money well. For example, by reviewing programmes annually, assessing how they perform against FCDO priorities and making improvements.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) scrutinizes the effectiveness and value for money of UK aid. In June 2023, ICAI scored the UK's agriculture portfolio (covering all UK delivery programmes, investments and research funding related to agriculture) Green-Amber, reflecting its substantial achievements and recommending areas for improvement. The Government accepted all of ICAI's recommendations. A follow-up ICAI report in May 2024 commended the strength of FCDO's response to the recommendations.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether Ministers in his Department have met with representatives of Arden Strategies since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Catherine West
No FCDO Minister has met with representatives of Arden Strategies since 5 July 2024.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether Ministers in his Department have met representatives of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Catherine West
Details of ministers' meetings with external individuals and organisations are published quarterly in arrears on GOV.UK. The most recent publication of transparency data took place on 29th August 2024.
Ministers confirmed a nil return to meetings with representatives of Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 5 July 2024.