Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of (a) the value of the Senior Pacific Police Leadership Program; and (b) the effect of the level of investment in the program by his Department.

The aim of the Senior Pacific Police Leadership Programme (SPPL), which ran in 2013, was to improve leadership skills, promote ethical policing practices and reinforce the rights of women in the Pacific. The programme was run in partnership with Australia and New Zealand and was well received by the students and their respective governments.

Twenty-one senior police officers from 15 Pacific Island Countries took part - and it was designed to complement larger scale assistance being provided by our allies in the region.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spent £23,000 on the SPPL programme. We believe that the SPPL programme has had a positive impact, and helped improve police leadership in the countries which participated. Feedback from our partners in those countries, and from our New Zealand partners who hosted the programme, suggests that the SPPL programme provided a quality of training that would not otherwise be available in the region.