Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to her Department’s publication of spending over £25,000, what the purpose was of the £100,288.65 payment made by her Department to the Cabinet Office on 21 February 2022 under the description Pilot Assessment Centre.

The payment was for the provision of Alternative Leadership Assessments and Staff Engagement Exercises offered via the Senior Civil Servants (SCS) Assessment Service in the Cabinet Office. These are used widely across Government for appointments into the SCS and we introduced them in FCDO in September 2021, as part of our new promotion process.