To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many redundancies there were in her Department in each year since 1997; what the cost of such redundancies was in each year; how many temporary staff were employed in each year; and how many staff were seconded by outside organisations to posts within the Department in each year. (95254)

The rules governing redundancies are set out by the Cabinet Office and includes schemes for Compulsory Early Retirement (CER) for officers over 50 and Compulsory Early Severance (CES) for those under 50.

The annual number of junior/middle management officers in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) who have taken redundancy through the CER or CES schemes for the years 1997 to 2006 are shown in the table and include efficiency restructuring in FCO Services. Costs shown for the years 1997 to 2001 are the total for all early retirements in each of those years. We could not break these figures down further without incurring disproportionate costs. The costs from 2002 to 2006 cover redundancy packages only.