Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what criteria they use to determine the number of diplomatic staff for a country that are permitted to work in the United Kingdom.

Appointments to diplomatic missions are governed by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, which states that States may freely appoint members of staff to their missions, and, in the absence of specific agreement, the receiving state may require that the size of a mission be kept within limits. His Majesty's Government does not set objective criteria for limiting the number of diplomatic staff for a country in the UK, but, as set out in the 1985 Government Report on the Review of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, His Majesty's Government may limit the size of a mission in cases where there are issues relating to the nature of the mission's activities or to take account of the size of UK missions in the country concerned. Such considerations are made on a case-by-case basis.