Departmental Equality

Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what the role of his Department’s Diversity Champion is; and what the process for selecting the champion is.

Mr. Ivan Lewis
Working in a global environment means that diversity is at the heart of the Department for International Development’s (DFID) business. DFID’s Director General Diversity Champion is fully committed to the legal, economic and moral imperatives which help develop DFID into a flexible, imaginative and diverse Department. DFID’s Diversity Champion is fully involved in taking steps to raise awareness and integrate all strands of diversity to maximise the potential and contribution of all staff to realise our goals.

DFID’s Director General Diversity Champion role is rotated every few years among DFID’s four Director Generals. DFID does not have a formal process for selecting a Director General for the Diversity Champion role.

Mrs. Curtis-Thomas
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what his Department's performance against each of its diversity targets was at the 2008 deadline.

Mr. Ivan Lewis
The Department for International Development (DFID) set four 2008 diversity targets for women, ethnic minority staff and disabled staff within the senior civil service and women in top management posts. The following table depicts the civil service targets together with DFID’s 2008 targets and DFID’s performance.

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|Civil service 2008 targets                          |DFID 2008 target|DFID 2008 performance|
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|37 per cent. women in the senior civil service (SCS)|37              |37                   |
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|30 per cent. women in top management posts          |35              |35                   |
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|4 per cent. ethnic minority staff in the SCS        |12              |11.7                 |
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|3.2 per cent. disabled staff in the SCS             |4               |2.1                  |
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DFID's diversity monitoring data and analysis for the last three years can be found at:

www.dfid.gov.uk.