Lord Watts
Main Page: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Watts's debates with the Cabinet Office
(8 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bridges of Headley
I entirely agree with the noble Lord. He obviously speaks with a great deal of experience. As the nephew of a diplomat, I am somewhat biased but I completely agree. On his final point about language skills, more needs to be done, as always. We need to make sure that we are getting the best diplomats who are not just aware of the culture of the countries to which they are posted, but are also able to speak the language. I am delighted that the Foreign Office language centre reopened in 2013 and is doing much to address this.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister explain the purpose of collecting these data if we do not do anything with them?
Lord Bridges of Headley
First, let us see what the data say; then, if they say that there are talents in pockets of society who are not applying and we think should be applying, we will redouble our efforts to ensure we get more applications from those groups.