Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Disclosure of Information
(asked on 14th November 2022) - View Source
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many (a) non-disclosure and (b) other confidentiality agreements relating to (i) employment, (ii) bullying, (iii) misconduct and (iii) harassment cases have been agreed by their Department in each year since 1 January 2010; and how much money from the public purse has been spent on (A) legal costs and (B) financial settlements for such agreements in each year since 1 January 2010.
Answered by
David Rutley
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The numbers for non-disclosure and other confidentiality agreements are set out in the table below for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development up until the departments merged in September 2020, and for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office since then.
In 2010 and 2011 it was standard practice in DFID to arrange for compromise agreements to be put in place for staff who, by agreement, left the organisation under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme. These agreements included a confidentiality clause as a matter of course.
Year | FCO (until 1 September 2020) | DFID (until 1 September 2020) | FCDO (from 2 September 2020) |
2010 | Not held | 11 | |
2011 | Not held | 7 | |
2012 | Not held | Fewer than five | |
2013 | None | Fewer than five | |
2014 | None | None | |
2015 | None | None | |
2016 | None | None | |
2017 | None | None | |
2018 | None | None | |
2019 | None | None | |
2020 | None | None | Fewer than five * |
2021 | None | ||
2022 | None |
*No financial settlements were involved. It is not possible to identify the proportion of legal costs which related to non-disclosure.
The FCDO follows Government policy which, since 2015 has been clear that confidentiality clauses should not be used to prevent staff from raising or discussing allegations of bullying, harassment and discrimination.