Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many (a) consultants and (b) seconded staff (i) are working and (ii) have been recruited to work at his Department in the last three years; and from which (A) companies, (B) departments and (C) other organisations such staff were recruited or seconded.

A) Consultants

The data that the FCO holds on consultancy projects is tracked by project rather than by individual. Consultants are not always appointed as individuals, rather the project in question is delivered via a company, which allocates the work to experts according to requirements. It is not therefore possible to provide, at proportionate cost, data on the number of consultants recruited to work at the FCO in the last three years. We can however confirm that the FCO has spent the following on consultancy projects in the last three years:

Financial Year 2015/16 - £1.1m
Financial Year 2014/15 - £1.6m
Financial Year 2013/14 - £1.5m

The FCO’s consultancy expenditure is primarily for specialist advice that supports our diplomacy and where ‘in-house’ expertise is not available, such as de-mining surveys.

B) Secondments

With regards to staff on loan from other Government Departments and those seconded from the private sector, the numbers are as follows, based on the year the loan started:

In 2016 (to date) 147 Civil Servants, 1 public servant, and 1 secondee from the private sector have joined the FCO on loan.

In 2015, 161 Civil Servants, and 3 public servants joined the FCO on loan. There were no secondments from the private sector.

In 2014, 149 Civil Servants, 1 public servant and 1 secondee from the private sector joined the FCO on loan.

Due to the small numbers of loans from individual organisations, it is not possible to give a breakdown of all the organisations from which they were loaned, without risking identification of individuals in breach of data protection rules. However the largest numbers of officers loaned to the FCO in all three years came from:

2016 2015 2014
DFID 21 25 11
Home Office 20 20 20
Cabinet Office 10 9 20
HM Treasury 11 11 10
MOD 13 14 12
BIS 14 12 14
DECC 12 4 10
MOJ 6 14 9

Fewer than five individuals a year were loaned from any other department. The public servants loaned to the FCO were all Parliamentary staff or Police Officers.