Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what role her Department had in Operation Pelican; how many staff of her Department were assigned to work relating to that operation; and what the total cost of her Department's work on that operation was.

I refer the Honourable Member to the answer given in PQ 136677 by the Minister for Crime and Policing on 18 March 2022. Operation Pelican was led by the Metropolitan Police. No Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) officials were directly assigned to work on Operation Pelican. During this time, officials in the FCDO continued to manage the diplomatic relationship between the UK and Ecuador.