Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Staff

(asked on 10th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of changes to the level of staffing in her Department on the Government's ability to respond to international humanitarian crises.


Answered by
Amanda Milling Portrait
Amanda Milling
Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
This question was answered on 17th January 2022

The department's focus on strategic workforce planning will ensure that we have the right capabilities to deliver on our international priorities as set out in the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy and the forthcoming International Development Strategy. We want to ensure we invest in our people, take forward work to align terms and conditions and reward high performers. We will remain agile in the face of emerging opportunities and challenges.

Various workforce models were looked at prior to the current Foreign Secretary joining which we are not proceeding with. At this stage no decisions on changes to staff numbers have been made. The purpose of our planning processes is to take into account exactly the sort of issue you raise - ensuring we have adequate staffing to ensure the UK will continue to be a leading responder to new rapid onset crises, providing lifesaving humanitarian assistance at times of crisis as well as tackling their causes. As the Prime Minister and Minister Cleverly have said in the House on 15 and 16 December, there will not be an across the board 10 per cent reduction in FCDO staff. Indeed, with the addition of new responsibilities on the UK's relationship with the EU, we will need to further expand our capability in some areas to reflect new priorities.

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