Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have undertaken unconscious bias training in each of the last five years.

The FCO takes unconscious bias training seriously. All staff must complete mandatory online unconscious bias training once every three years. There are three ways the FCO supports staff in this learning: by direct access to the Civil Service Learning (CSL) website, by accessing CSL via the FCO's internal learning system, Global Learning Opportunities (GLO), or by attending courses delivered overseas by learning specialists and learning champions.

The FCO is only able to access records for staff who have accessed the CSL unconscious bias training offer via the second of these routes, i.e. via GLO. Over the last five years, a total of 2,896 FCO staff accessed CSL unconscious bias training in this way. The FCO can provide an annual breakdown for 2019 and 2020, but not for 2016-18. In 2019, 566 FCO members of staff completed the CSL online unconscious bias training, and so far in 2020, 555 FCO members of staff have undertaken the training.