§ Dr. StarkeyTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many Department of Trade and Industry staff are currently on secondment to his Department; from which sections in the DTI they have come; and in which sections in his Department they are working. [119915]
§ Mr. HainThere are 51 Department of Trade and Industry staff currently on loan to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
These staff were deployed from the following DTI Directorates: Consumer Affairs, Communications and Information Industries, Communications, Deregulation, Environment, Employee Relations, Invest in Britain Bureau, Management Best Practice, Nuclear Industries, Office of Science and Technology, Trade Policy, Warren Spring Laboratory, Export Control and Non-Proliferation and several regional Government Offices.
Since May 1999, British Trade International (a joint FCO/DTI Department) has had lead responsibility within Government for trade development and promotion on behalf of British business. This joint operation covers UK and overseas activity. Many of the DTI staff on loan to the FCO are deployed in British Trade International posts overseas. The majority of these staff took up their postings from what are now British Trade International UK operations.
67WOf the 51, there are currently 38 DTI staff in the following FCO and British Trade International posts overseas: Almaty, Amman, Bonn, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Chicago, Dhaka, Gibraltar, Hanoi, The Hague, Houston, Johannesburg, Karachi, Kuwait, Lagos, Los Angeles, Moscow, Munich, New Delhi, Oslo, Ottawa, Paris, Peking, Seoul, Tokyo, UKMis Geneva, UKRep Brussels, Washington.
In London, the remaining 13 DTI staff are working in the following FCO departments: Aviation, Maritime, Science and Energy; Latin America and Caribbean; Near East and North Africa; North America; Resource Planning, and the Diplomatic Service Language Centre (undertaking full-time language training).