Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many diplomatic staff employed by his Department on matters relating to (a) India and (b) China are stationed in (i) London, (ii) India and (iii) China.

In London as at 30 April 2019, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has 20-39 FCO diplomatic staff that work within South Asia and Afghanistan Directorate (SAAD) which includes India, and 40-59 diplomatic staff that work within Asia Pacific Directorate (APD), including China. This does not include home civil servants. We are unable to offer numbers working on inividual countries within these Directorates. In addition, there are officers in other areas of the FCO whose work relates to China or India but we do not hold this level of detail on our central Human resources management systems.

The Her Majesty's Government networks in India and mainland China are two of the largest in the world. There are nearly 700 UK government staff nationwide in China and around 1,000 UK government staff in India, in both cases representing a number of British government departments.