Tom Pursglove – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Pursglove on 2015-10-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many civil servants in his Department are members of trades unions; how much working hours facility time is claimed by each such civil servant; and what the cost of that facility time is to his Department.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

We are unable to provide the number of Union affiliated Civil Servants within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) as there is no requirement for union members to declare their membership to an employer and since April 2015 we no longer collect trade union subscriptions through the payroll.

The FCO submits Quarterly Returns to the Cabinet Office setting out the amount of facility time taken and cost to the pay bill. The Cabinet Office publish these statistics annually, listing the individual departments.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/418380/Annex_A_-_Facility_Time_Figures_Q1_2014-Q4_2014_Overall.ods