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.
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, when his Department first discussed the matter of Mauritius exercising full sovereignty over the Chagos Islands with (a) his international counterparts and (b) the Government of Mauritius.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
As the then Foreign Secretary's statement of 3 November 2022 describes, negotiations between the UK Government and the Government of the Republic of Mauritius on the exercise of sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago were started by the previous Conservative government in November 2022. It was the Conservative government which made the key concession of offering to give up sovereignty, from which there was no coming back. Please see the written statement published on Thursday 3 November 2022: [https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-11-03/debates/22110340000007/ChagosArchipelago]
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 overseas aid is distributed via GiveDirectly.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has recently worked on two Give Directly projects, the first to build climate resilience in Malawi, and the second for humanitarian support to majority Sudanese refugees in Uganda.
The Minister for International Development confirmed at the International Development Select Committee on 3 June that our funding for GiveDirectly in Malawi is paused.
The latest figure for 2024 expenditure is £1.96 million in Malawi and £1.85 million in Uganda, totalling £3.81 million. Details of programmes, including disbursements, are available on DevTracker. Based on published provisional total Official Development Assistance (ODA) figures for 2024, these disbursements represent 0.027 per cent of the total 2024 UK ODA expenditure of £14.066 billion.
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 steps he is taking to increase the number of apprenticeship starts in his Department.
Answered by Catherine West
We remain committed to supporting the use of apprenticeships across all Government Departments to break down barriers to opportunity. This includes supporting the Government's commitment to 2,000 digital apprenticeships through its TechTrack scheme by 2030 to improve digital skills and drive improvements and efficiency in public services.
Additionally, a new cross-Government Level 3 apprenticeship programme in Business Administration, the 'Civil Service Career Launch Apprenticeship' (CLA), will see new apprentices kickstart their careers, across various departments, starting from January 2026.
Moreover, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office are working on aligning our apprenticeship approach with our capability framework. For example, we are exploring new apprenticeship opportunities to scale our approach and build internal capability on Data and AI.
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 steps he is taking to protect Christians from persecution in (a) Rwanda and (b) the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Protection of civilians, promotion of respect between different religious and non-religious groups, and human rights are priorities for the UK. The UK continues to work through UN bodies and other multilateral fora to promote and protect these rights. Recent attacks by IS-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) on Christian communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are alarming and we are deeply saddened by the loss of life. Ministers and senior officials including our Ambassador in Kinshasa regularly raise the importance of civilian protection with the Government of DRC. The UK continues to remind all parties of their obligations under international humanitarian law and make clear that all those who have committed human rights violations and abuses must be held accountable.