Fiona Bruce – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fiona Bruce on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what proportion of his Department’s (a) budget and (b) personnel is allocated to promoting human rights, rule of law and democracy in other countries.

Mr David Lidington

As the Government set out in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) 2014 Annual Human Rights and Democracy Report, it is difficult to calculate an exact figure for what we spend annually on human rights and democracy work. This is because it is an integral part of the department’s work across the network.

However, by combining relevant programme spend, grant-in-aid spending, and estimated personnel costs, we were able to calculate a conservative figure of approximately £42.6 million for the financial year 2014-15.

In terms of personnel, we also set out in the report that approximately 240 full-time equivalents in the FCO work on human rights.