Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if she will list the titles of all the events organised by Civil Service networks in her Department since 2017.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
I refer the Rt. Hon. Member to the answer of 25 June 2025 to question 59393.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what measures her Department has in place to run critical services in the event of a major internet outage.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has established business continuity and IT service continuity arrangements to sustain critical services during severe disruption, including a major internet outage. For security reasons, the department does not publish operational details of its resilience arrangements.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether overseas aid provided to the Safe Abortion Action Fund has been given to Las Libres since 2022.
Answered by Chris Elmore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK provides overseas aid to the Safe Abortion Action Fund (SAAF), which works to expand access to legal, safe and life-saving abortion services in low- and middle-income countries. SAAF is a pooled fund which supports a number of partners globally, details of which can be found on its website.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many times (a) Ministers and (b) special advisers in her Department have met with abortion providers since July 2024.
Answered by Chris Elmore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
All ministerial meetings with external organisations, and relevant Special Adviser meetings, are published in the usual way on gov.uk.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many days was the Union Flag flown on the main Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office building in (a) 2024 and (b) 2025 to date.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office building on King Charles Street has flown the Union Flag daily throughout 2024 and thus far in 2025.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department has spent money on promotion through social media influencers since July 2024.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office's central communication team has not paid any social media influencers for promotion since July 2024.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, on what dates the Chagos Contact Group (a) has met and (b) has plans to meet.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Contact Group is part of this government's commitment to increase UK support to Chagossian communities. Its first meeting, which I attended, took place on 2 September 2025. The Contact Group will meet quarterly as part of wider engagement between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Chagossians.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much his Department has spent on equipment to enable civil servants to work from home in each of the last three years.
Answered by Catherine West
Heads of departments have agreed that 60 per cent minimum office attendance for most staff continues to be the best balance of working for the Civil Service. All Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) staff in the UK are eligible to apply for hybrid working. At post, hybrid working for Country Based Staff is at the discretion of the Head of Mission.
FCDO policy is to ensure provision to all staff with safe and appropriate equipment for homeworking in line with Health and Safety legislation. There are cost limits for equipment and this must be solely for the purpose of enabling staff to work from home.
Data on home working expenditure is not tracked separately and is spread across various expense codes and expenditure types. Isolating this would require manual review of large volumes of data over three years, making it impractical to extract reliably without disproportionate effort and cost.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how overseas aid intended to alleviate climate change in Malawi is spent.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
UK bilateral aid to Malawi in Financial Year 2024/25 was £49 million, of which £11.6 million was invested in alleviating climate change, including through responding to humanitarian disasters, funding policy research and contributing to seasonal humanitarian appeals. The UK's flagship Building Resilience and Adapting to Climate Change (BRACC) programme supported UN agencies to build the resilience to climate shocks of poor households through improving agricultural productivity. Since the programme began in 2018, over 1.75 million people have been supported to cope with the effects of climate change, particularly droughts and floods, and a further 1.46 million people were assisted during humanitarian crises by cash transfers.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much and what proportion of the overseas aid budget is delivered in the form of direct (a) cash and (b) bank payments to individuals.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has supported cash transfers within its humanitarian and social protection systems work for a number of years because they are a well-evidenced mechanism for reducing extreme hunger and poverty at scale, building resilience to prevent crises, and meeting the lifesaving humanitarian needs of highly vulnerable people, e.g. during droughts and conflict.
In 2023, £881 million of bilateral UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) was spent on humanitarian aid, a proportion of which was cash payments. In the same year, £129 million (1.3 per cent of bilateral UK ODA) was spent on social protection, including but not only cash transfers.
Cash transfers are increasingly being delivered through electronic payment systems, reducing the administrative cost and making them more secure. The delivery modality varies by context - the FCDO does not collect aggregated data on these modalities for direct cash payments.