Greg Mulholland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, pursuant to his Oral Statement of 5 September 2016, Official Report, columns 38 to 41, how many of his Department’s 300 officials were recruited for their ability to speak a second language.

Mr Robin Walker

The Department for Exiting the EU now has over 200 staff, and is growing fast. The overall size and scope of the new Department, including staffing and budget, are regularly reviewed. We will ensure we are appropriately staffed to deal with all aspects of the forthcoming negotiation. There are currently 43 (French) speaker slots in UKRep, for which the staff require operational language skills to undertake the post. For the wider Department there are a number of staff with language skills, however these are not currently a requirement of the posts and were not the determining factor in recruitment. We are undertaking work to identify the skills required for the future so this position may change in due course.