Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 7 February 2022 to Question 116852 on NATO, how many staff in his Department and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office have worked on engagement with NATO in each year since 2010.

This information is not held centrally but could only be provided at Disproportionate Cost.

The Government's policy towards NATO is co-ordinated by the Euro-Atlantic Security Policy Unit (EASP), a joint MOD-FCDO unit which was established in October 2016 to bring together the work previously handled by separate MOD and FCO teams. Staffing on NATO since 2010 has fluctuated around the 30-mark in total across the two departments, expanding when required to deliver major events such as the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales and the 2019 NATO Leaders' meeting in London.

In the Ministry of Defence, responsibility for EASP falls within the Euro-Atlantic Security Directorate, and in the FCDO within the Directorate for Defence and International Security.

The policy team at the UK's Joint Delegation to NATO numbers around 50.