Letter to the Parliamentary Relations
and Devolution Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, from
the Second Clerk of the Committee, 13 May 2004
Thank you for sending the Committee advance
copies of this year's Departmental Report. These have now been
circulated and Members are looking forward to the oral evidence
session with the Permanent Under-Secretary on Tuesday 29 June.
As in previous years, the Committee has a number
of requests for clarification and further information arising
from the Report. These are set out below in the order in which
they appear in the Report:
1. Could the Office provide further details
of the review of security at its posts? Who is carrying out the
reviews; what outside expertise is being utilised (from both outside
the Office and outside Government); when will the initial review
of all posts be completed; how have security needs been balanced
against other factors, such as accessibility and location; from
where will the additional resources required for any upgrading
of security alterations come? (p 9)
2. How has the impact of the "Think
UK" campaign in China been assessed; what feedback was received?
How will future campaigns learn from the experience of this one?
(p 23)
3. What "research into international
opinion" has the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board drawn upon
in the last year? (p 24)
4. To what does the BBC World Service attribute
the "dip" in its audience size for 2002-03 in Asia/Pacific,
Eurasia and Europe? On what basis does it predict that the figures
will rise again in the latter two areas in 2003-04? (table 2,
p 31)
5. What are the "agreed milestones
for 2003-04" relating to the Office's PSA target to contribute
to the reduction of opium production and poppy cultivation in
Afghanistan? When is it anticipated that cultivation and production
will actually begin to fall? (p 61)
6. How is progress towards PSA 4 measured
and what data is used? When will the information be available,
and how is it possible for FCO management and readers of the report
to assess whether the Office is "on track" to meet this
target during the year if all data is retrospective? How is work
towards this target divided up and co-ordinated between the three
departments involved? (p 62)
7. (a) Given the footnote to the two
tables illustrating the work of UKTI on page 70 of the Report
("These figures include projects with and without UK Trade
and Investment involvement"), how is it possible to assess
accurately the impact of UKTI on inward investment activity? (p
90)
(b) What are the reasons for the apparent
fall in UKTI's income noted in Table 5 in the period 2002-03?
8. (a) What is being done to bring performance
back on target, in relation to the PSA 5 delivery standard of,
"At least 50% of new-to-export firms assisted improving their
business performance within two years"? Will remedial action
incur any additional expense? (p 74)
(b) Could you supply the data currently
missing from the table on page 74, relating to the third delivery
standard?
9. Why has the allocation of resources to
the Drugs and Crime Fund (DCF), as part of the Global Opportunities
Fund (GOF), apparently been reduced for years two and three of
the current spending review period? (p 82) How will this impact
on the planned expansion of the work to combat drug trafficking
highlighted on page 60 of the Report?
10. Could you provide the scorecards used
to measure progress towards the targets relating to PSA 7, in
confidence if necessary? (p 92)
11. How is the Office seeking to tackle
its failure to make progress towards the last element of its PSA
8 target—"greater support for Europe in the UK"?
(p 106)
12. What has been the impact of the cancellation
of the inter-active voice recognition (IVR) system on the rest
of the relevant budget, and the Consular Division's efficiency
savings? Has anything been recovered from the project's capital
investment? What lessons have been learned from the project's
cancellation? (p 112)
13. When will the GenIE-Worldwide system
be fully rolled out? What will be the total cost of the new system,
once fully delivered, and how is it being funded? (p 118)
14. Have all posts now supplied the data
relevant to the PSA 10 targets, listed on page 122 of the Report?
If so, do they affect the overall performance figures printed
in the Report? (p 122)
15. The Report sets out the average performance
by posts against PSA targets relating to visa services. For the
first three targets listed on page 124 of the Report, could you
provide details of the three best and worst-performing posts,
in order to give the Committee a picture of the range of service
delivery performance provided by the Office? (p 124)
16. Could you provide details of the take-up
of online visa applications in the countries where it is now available?
What percentage of applications are now made online in each country?
Where is it envisaged that the facility will be expanded to next?
When is it anticipated that the pilot for online payment will
be completed? (p 124)
17. When does the Office expect to introduce
outsourcing in Kenya, Nigeria and Malaysia? Will the arrangements
in those countries differ in any significant way from those seen
by Members of the Committee in India? (p 125)
18. Could you provide the Committee with
the figures for the number of UK visa applications 1998-2007,
given in Chart E on page 125 of the Report? (p 125)
19. What is the planned roll-out for the
collection of biometric data by visa-issuing posts? Which posts
will be next to be upgraded and when? How will this impact upon
the Office's outsourcing programme? (p 127)
20. Could you explain why the "delay
to Prism should ensure a better end-product for HR as we implement
it during 2004-05"? (p 159)
21. A significant proportion of FCO's administration
costs are asset related charges-depreciation, cost of capital
charge, impairment arising from revaluation (Note 3, Resource
Accounts 2002-03). Are these costs included in the baseline against
which the 2.5% efficiency savings are measured, and, if so, what
steps is the Office taking to secure savings in these charges?
In addition, what proportion of the total 2.5% efficiency savings
does the FCO expect will be non-cash savings? (p 163)
22. How much, if any, of the £36.9
million received by the Office from the Treasury Reserve will
have to be paid back in due course? (p 163)
23. What has been the impact on the FCO's
other activities of the need for the Office to absorb large additional
resource demands related to Iraq in 2003-04 and the current year?
Which programmes have been cut as a result? (p 163)
24. What has been the impact of the increased
concern about security at overseas posts on the asset recycling
programme? (p 165 ff.)
25. What are the underlying reasons for
the differences in the proportion of rented/owned assets across
the different regions shown in Chart F? Is the asset recycling
programme being implemented differently at a regional level? (p
166)
26. Are there plans to move any more staff
out of London, further to those referred to in the Report? (p
166)
27. In the light of the difficulties experienced
by the Office in relation to the asset recycling programme, outlined
in the Report on page 167, does the Office still "remain
optimistic that our SR2000 target of £100 million is achievable"
(Departmental Report 2003, p 141)? What was the shortfall in capital
receipts in 2002-03 and 2003-04, and what impact did this have
on the Office's investment programme in each year?
28. When will the "further discussions"
with HM Treasury mentioned in the Report take place, and when
will their outcome be known? (p 168)
29. Given the developments outlined in the
Report, is it envisaged that any properties will be sold before
the outcome of the talks with the Treasury are known, or have
all such sales been temporarily placed on hold? (p 168)
30. Where will the extra £4.1 million
required to fund the Prism Programme come from? (p 168)
31. How does the Office, the British Council
and the BBC World Service intend to "demonstrate" that
they have achieved efficiency gains, rather than simply work within
reduced budgets? (p 174)
32. Given the budgetary difficulties being
experienced by the Office at this time, is it envisaged that reductions
will be made in any of the UK's contributions to international
organisations? (pp 181 and 187-8)
The Committee also have the following, related, requests:
33. Could the FCO provide the Committee
with a list of all properties in the overseas estate sold or offered
for sale in the financial year 2003-04, as the Office did last
year (in the same format)?
34. The Committee found the table in last
year's Departmental Report showing the "Changing Establishment
of FCO Posts" (Departmental Report 2003, p 13, table 1) most
useful. Could you supply an updated version of this table?
35. Further to the Committee's Report on
last year's Departmental Report, the Committee would like to gain
a better insight into the scale of the problem facing the Department
in relation to different Government departments paying LES different
rates at the same post (Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual
Report 2003, HC 859, para 83). Could you, therefore, provide information
on:
(a) the number of FCO posts where other Government
departments have "an autonomous presence", with an indication
of how many departments are represented at posts and which ones;
and
(b) the rates of remuneration for comparable
LES positions (eg drivers, security guards, etc) at a post with
more than one other autonomous Government department present—Jamaica,
for instance.
36. Could the FCO provide the Committee
with a summary table of the SR2002 PSA targets which states, for
each, whether current progress is "on course", "not
known", "slippage" etc as this information is not
always easy to identify in the main text of the report.
37. What was the outcome of the FCO's consideration
of "innovative ways of obtaining better value for money from
the estate to supplement the existing recycling programme"
(Departmental Investment Strategy, p 22)? The Investment Strategy
gives examples of the possibility of PPP disposals or the sale
of surplus development rights-are any of these projects underway?
38. Following the trial of devolution of
estate budgets to geographical directorates (Investment Strategy,
p 29) did the Office find that better decisions were made about
the estate? Will this trial be extended further so that more than
50% of all FCO estate expenditure is devolved to directorates
(p 165)? Does each directorate have an asset recycling revenue
target or are these decisions made centrally?
39. The Committee found the information
given in response to Mr Bob Spink's recent written parliamentary
question, concerning the break-down of FCO staff by age, gender
and ethnicity, very helpful (HC Deb, 23 April 2004, col 710W).
Could you supply the same data for FCO staff on 1 October 2000,
2001 and 2002? Could you also set out briefly the sort of positions
filled by staff at each of the grades listed.
40. Further to Mr Malcolm Bruce's written
question to Mr O'Brien (HC Deb, 29 April 2004, col 1209W), could
the Office clarify why details of employment tribunals (or their
equivalents) involving locally-engaged members of staff are not
kept and monitored centrally? How does the Office ensure that
best practice is being observed across all posts, in relation
to the employment conditions of such LES, without such data? Is
the equivalent information kept on file for UK-based staff?
41. Could the Office provide further details
of the facts behind the story which appeared in the Daily Telegraph
recently concerning the High Commissioner's Residence in New
Delhi? (Daily Telegraph, 6 May 2004, p 19)
To allow time for the answers to be circulated
to Members in time for the evidence session with Sir Michael,
I would be most grateful if you could respond to the points raised
above by Monday 14 June. If you would like any clarification of
the questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Geoffrey Farrar
Second Clerk of the Committee
13 May 2004
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