Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many of the fixed-term contract staff in his Department have gone through (a) the deep vetting process, (b) language training and (b) other professional training; and what estimate he has made of the cost of each of those processes.

The FCDO's vetting provider, UKSV, charges £1371 for an initial DV clearance. A small number of FTC officers hold DV clearance but, for security reasons, we are not able to provide a total figure as this may make individuals identifiable.

Language and professional training information for fixed-term contract staff is not held centrally and to compile this information would incur disproportionate cost. We can however confirm that no fixed-term contract staff have received full-time language training.