FCDO Staffing Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateFleur Anderson
Main Page: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)Department Debates - View all Fleur Anderson's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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I remind the hon. Gentleman and the House that we have gone through an unprecedented financial contraction because of covid. The British Council, which derives a significant proportion of its income from tuition, has been hit because of the difficulty in providing tuition in the era of covid, but it has done genuinely fantastic work using technology to continue to provide those services. The Foreign Secretary and I recently had a meeting with the senior leadership of the British Council to discuss what we could do to protect the things that we value highly in terms of its delivery of soft power, to ensure that it not only survives but thrives, once we are able to get past this covid situation.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) on securing this urgent question. I am not reassured at all by the Minister’s statement. I have seen the email to the FCDO staff. It says, “We are planning on the basis of just under 10% reduction in our overall workforce size by March 2025”. So is that actually a 9.9% reduction, or something else slightly different from 10%? The Minister was careful to say that there would be no 10% reduction, but will it be a figure that is close to 10%, but not 10%? The aid cuts are a disgrace, and it is easy to spend that money on big multilateral programmes, on the World Bank and on the United Nations, but not on those local projects on the ground that the former DFID staff are so good at supporting and that result in real poverty reduction and real peace building on the ground. Can the Minister reassure the House that the cut will not be anywhere near 10%, and that local staff who know the projects on the ground and who can really effect poverty reduction will not be cut?
I remind the hon. Lady and the House that there is a difference between the figure that is used internally by officials for planning purposes and decisions that are made by Ministers. The decision around these issues will be made by Ministers. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and I have made it clear that that figure is not a ministerial figure. With regard to the balance between multilateral and bilateral, the hon. Lady makes an important point. We very much value the work that is done bilaterally in the sometimes small but incredibly highly effective projects that are delivered by the British Government underneath the British flag to some of the most poor and dispossessed people in the world, and that will remain a priority for this Government.