Civil Service Fast Stream

Lord Watts Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[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.