Personnel Locally-engaged staff
80. The Annual Report records that FCO posts around
the world currently employ some 9,860 locally-engaged staff (including
730 working directly to other Government Departments), at a cost
of about £130 million per annum.[114]
This represents an increase of 1,000 over the past two years,
of whom a quarter have been employed as additional security guards
post-September 11 and about 50 taken on at newly-established posts.[115]
81. We are pleased to note that, in accordance with
our request last year, the 2003 Annual Report contains more information
about the important role locally-engaged staff play in the Foreign
Office than in previous publications.[116]
This reflects the clear commitment to these staff that
the current Permanent Under-Secretary showed in his evidence to
the Committee In his supplementary memorandum to the Committee,
he told us that: "We attract and retain many highly-talented
and highly committed local staff. It is essential that these people
are well-managed."[117]
He provided details of how the 'Charter of Principles,' which
governs the management of staff overseas, commits all those in
the chain of command to good management practice. A number of
posts are also applying for the 'Investors in People' accreditation,
or have already gained it, thus ensuring that all those
employed by the Office can enjoy the same standard of management.[118]
We conclude that the commitment being shown by the management
of the Foreign Office to its locally-engaged staff is very welcome
indeed. We recommend that the Office continue to open up new opportunities
to these staff and do everything possible to ensure that good
management is practised across the entire department.
82. Increasingly, overseas posts are not solely staffed
by members of the Foreign Office. In a number of missions, several
other Government departments are also represented—the Home
Office, the DfID, or the Ministry of Defence (MOD), for example—and
consequently employ local staff in the same way the FCO does (for
example, as interpreters). We have received reports of some difficulties
at posts resulting from this co-location, when locally engaged
staff performing the same function for different departments,
receive different rates of remuneration. In response to a written
question from the Committee during the inquiry, the Foreign Office
provided further details of this problem:
The convention has been that where an FCO Post
is the largest employer, other Government Departments match the
pay and conditions of their locally-recruited staff to those authorised
by the FCO. In the few places where another Department is the
largest (lead) employer, then the FCO's employees will enjoy the
other Department's agreed pay and conditions.
In recent years we have found that other Departments,
with greater budgetary flexibility, have found the pay and conditions
at a few Posts a constraint on their ability to recruit and retain
the local personnel they need. There have in consequence been
some instances of a Department going it alone.
The. FCO is in discussion with the Departments
concerned about maintaining uniformity of approach to pay and
conditions for co-located, locally-engaged staff.[119]
83. The willingness of some departments to 'go it
alone' must inevitably create tensions amongst local staff working
side-by-side at the same post, and consequent difficulties for
FCO managers. We recommend that in its response to this Report,
the Foreign Office set out the results of its negotiations with
other Government Departments about the remuneration of locally-engaged
staff at overseas posts, and whether it has secured their co-operation
in not "going it alone" and setting their own pay scales.
84. We further recommend that the Foreign Office,
perhaps using recently retired diplomats and management experts,
carry out a general review of the role and terms and conditions
of employment of locally-engaged staff, including comparative
studies of the practice of other countries in this field.
114 Departmental Report 2003,
p 157, table 40 Back
115
Ev 85, Question 1 Back
116
Foreign Affairs Committee, Twelfth Report of Session 2001-02,
Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report 2002, HC
826, para 78 Back
117
Ev 84 Back
118
For further details of the Investors in People (IiP) scheme see:
www.iipuk.co.uk. Back
119
Ev 84 Back
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