§ Mr. Tom ArnoldTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list the responsibilities of each of the deputy secretaries in his Department and the numbers and grades of staff reporting to each.
§ Mr. MaudeThere are seven deputy secretaries in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, six in the diplomatic wing and one in the ODA. Broad areas of responsibility are as follows. A full range of diplomatic service grades (senior grade to DS10), specialist staff, secretaries and certain home civil service grades report to each diplomatic. wing deputy secretary. Numbers of staff in London reporting to each are indicated in brackets.
- (i) Europe and the United Nations (129);
- (ii) Commercial and certain functional areas including scientific environmental departments (129);
- (iii) Public related (e.g. consular, migration and visa) and administration departments (2,717);
- (v) Geographical departments covering the Americas, Asia and the Pacific (144);
- (v) Geographical departments covering Africa and the Middle East (113);
- (vi) Remaining political departments including areas such as security and defence (97).
A few specialist departments are not under the remit of a deputy secretary, for example legal advisers. Others are under the direct authority of the permanent undersecretary, for example research and economic advisers. Staff in these total 251.
The ODA's one deputy secretary is responsible for all expenditure, both bilateral and multilateral, under the aid programme. The ODA's operations are managed by 625 staff at home and 52 staff overseas across a full range of grades.