Departmental Staff

Mr. Roger Williams
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many (a) marketing officers, (b) communications officers and (c) press officers are employed in her Department; and what the total expenditure on communications for her Department was on (i) Government Information and Communication Service staff and (ii) other (A) press officers, (B) special advisers and (C) staff in the last year for which figures are available.

Mr. Hoon
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has 62 communicators in the UK, which include people working in e-media, UK Outreach, Consular and European communication, speech writers and stakeholder outreach. We have the equivalent of 50 webmasters working in the overseas network. There are 35 press officers in London working with domestic, international, foreign and foreign language media and around 300 staff overseas whose duties include press and public affairs. We have seven marketing officers who work for FCO Services and are responsible for developing and implementing FCO Services marketing strategy.

The FCO operates a devolved budgeting system for each department/post and there are no central records covering the total expenditure on communications.