Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what the total pay bill was for (a) male and (b) female employees in his Department in 2015-16; and what the per capita spend from that pay bill for each man and woman was in that year.

Total and per capita salaries for male and female staff in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at 31 March 2016 were:

Our salary scales apply equally to male and female staff. The difference in average salaries is caused by a lower representation of women in the senior levels. We have made progress, we currently have our highest number of female heads of mission and more than half of the FCO Management board are women.