Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what the total (a) number and (b) value of Government contracts that have been contracted out by his Department was in each year since 2010; what the value of pro bono costs was in each such year; and what estimate he has made of the number of work days contracted out in each such year.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) externally sources a number of services including cleaning, security, catering, IT and facilities management. Many of these services were externally sourced before 2010. The two major examples of outsourcing contracts since 2010, where we have contracted for services previously managed internally, are:

• A Facilities Management Contract for the Asia Pacific Region in 2010 (valued at £133 million) which absorbed a combination of previously internally and externally sourced services; and

• A Service Management Integrator Contract in 2013 (valued at £55 million to date) which also absorbed a combination of previously internally and externally sourced services.

Major contracts are managed centrally, but our network of Posts around the world are also able to enter into smaller contracts. To collate information on all contracts managed in the UK and overseas would incur disproportionate cost.