Examination of Witnesses (Question Numers
80-99)
FOREIGN AND
COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
21 OCTOBER 2009
Q80 Mr Davidson: And be queuing there?
Sir Peter Ricketts: They have
got plenty of staff so, no, it is not bad actually, and the decisions
are taken by people sitting in the embassy.
Q81 Mr Davidson: I accept that my
information is perhaps dated but if that is overcome that is good.
Sir Peter Ricketts: There used
to be a real problem with visa queues but this outsourcing has
helped a lot.
Q82 Mr Davidson: You have brought
in talent at the top level which I think we very much welcome.
Can you clarify for me why you think it was that the Foreign Office
was so bad in the past and had such a bias against numbers basically?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I think we
are an organisation that is there to do foreign policy and the
people who come to the Foreign Office are basically interested
in foreign affairs and going out and doing business in the world
and over the decades not enough attention was paid, frankly, to
managing the money, the resources and the people, and I think
we have understood it is no good just being good at foreign policy;
you have got to manage your business properly.
Q83 Mr Davidson: To what extent have
you overcome the fact of being unrepresentative of society as
a whole? For our Kenyan visitors they will see in many sections
of government we have got the tribe, as it were, of public school/Oxbridge
people occupying a disproportionate number of positions at the
top of the government system. To what extent is that still the
position in the Foreign Office?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Unfortunately
we are three white males here. I cannot avoid that.
Q84 Mr Davidson: How many of you
are from public schools?
Sir Peter Ricketts: No actually.
I checked on members of my board. We have 11 members of the board
and seven went to state schools.
Q85 Mr Davidson: So five did not,
five went to public schools.
Sir Peter Ricketts: Four.
Mr Davidson: Sorry!
Mr Bacon: It is obvious which one you
went to!
Q86 Mr Davidson: You spotted that
deliberate mistake! That is still disproportionate but that is
very helpful. In terms of the top 10 officials inside the Department
outwith the board, what would the pattern be there? Is the pattern
at the top level different from the pattern at the bottom level
of people coming in?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Yes, we are
much more representative of modern Britain with the people that
we are recruiting today. We recruit pretty much 50/50 men and
women and large numbers of ethnic minorities from all part of
the UK. My generation is a reflection of what we recruited 30
years ago and there were many more men. Some were public school,
although I am not from public school and a lot of my colleagues
are not, and we were not as representative of modern Britain as
the intake generation now is, absolutely. As they are growing
up through the Foreign Office we are getting more women into more
senior jobs, more women ambassadors, more ethnic minorities in
senior positions. At the top we are still white and male.
Q87 Mr Davidson: I understand the
point about women and race and so on. More difficult to measure
is the question of social background. To what extent are you less
socially exclusive than you used to be and can you produce figures
to substantiate it?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I do not feel
we are socially exclusive at all.
Q88 Mr Davidson: There again the
Foreign Office never did and it clearly was, so what evidence
can you produce to show that you are less socially exclusive than
you were?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I think if
you looked at the qualifications of the people in top jobs around
the Foreign Office now you would find scientists, you would find
people from all parts of the UK, people who have been to universities
in all parts of the UK, with very different life stories, and
we are not by any means a socially homogenous group.
Q89 Mr Davidson: Do you have figures
that monitor this?
Sir Peter Ricketts: That is a
purely impressionistic survey.
Q90 Mr Davidson: Let me be clear.
You have figures that would monitor gender and you have figures
that would monitor race, but you do not have any figures that
monitor social origins?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Correct.
Q91 Mr Davidson: Which would tend
to be an indication to me that you do not take that seriously.
Sir Peter Ricketts: No, Mr Davidson,
I would disagree.
Q92 Mr Davidson: Surely if you did
take it seriously you would monitor it?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I do not think
it matters, frankly, what social background people come from,
as long as they bring intellect—
Q93 Mr Davidson: That is a traditional
Foreign Office view, is it not?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I do not know
if it is or not.
Q94 Mr Davidson: It used to be a
traditional Foreign Office view that it did not matter what gender
people were either but when we moved into the 20th century that
started to change and now all the time the top of government is
becoming more progressive and aware of the range of abilities
and talents that there are in society. You are saying that the
Foreign Office does not monitor social origins and sees no need
to do so?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I do not know
how we would start to monitor social origins.
Q95 Mr Davidson: So you do not even
know how to do it. I am having a lot of my prejudices confirmed.
Is it something that has ever been discussed in the Department?
Sir Peter Ricketts: We monitor
diversity in all sorts of ways, the number of women, the number
of ethnic minorities.
Q96 Mr Davidson: Run through the
numbers of ways you monitor it again—gender, race, easily
visible.
Sir Peter Ricketts: What we are
trying to do is recruit the best people for the jobs.
Q97 Mr Davidson: Sorry, what other
ways did you monitor diversity?
Sir Peter Ricketts: We recruit
qualified accountants when we need accountants. We look for people
with the right skills for the job.
Q98 Mr Davidson: I understand the
point about accountants being diverse but in terms of coming back
to the usual categories, and you indicated race and gender, I
am seeking to clarify what other categories you monitor.
Sir Peter Ricketts: I wonder if
I could ask you what other categories you think we should monitor
for social origin?
Q99 Mr Davidson: The way it usually
works is we ask the questions but social origin, disability for
example?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Yes.
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