Kevan Jones – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevan Jones on 2015-11-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what the size of his Department’s Rapid Deployment Teams in terms of personnel was in each year since 2010.

James Duddridge

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office Rapid Deployment Teams are a volunteer cadre of Foreign & Commonwealth Office staff trained to be deployed to augment crisis response overseas. Since 2010 we have had Rapid Deployment Teams based in London, Asia Pacific and the Americas. A fourth Rapid Deployment Team covering the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA) was introduced in 2012. In total, we have 185 active members of the Rapid Deployment Team globally consisting of 64 in London, 36 in Asia Pacific, 48 in the Americas and 37 in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia area. On call each week we have 12 London-based staff, 8 Middle East, North Africa and South Asia based staff, 10 Asia Pacific based staff and 11 Americas-based staff. These can be supplemented by additional specialists from the military, Police or British Red Cross. Around 72 new Rapid Deployment Team volunteers are trained each year.