Written question asked by Andrew Stephenson (Conservative) on Tuesday, 7 July 2015, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 9 July 2015. It was answered by Tobias Ellwood (Conservative) on Wednesday, 15 July 2015 on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Arabic

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many fluent Arabic speakers his Department employed in each of the last five years.

Answer: There is no mandatory requirement for staff employed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to have fluency in a language. We do not hold the information requested broken down by year, but the latest information on our personnel database shows that we have 131 staff with registered skills in Arabic at varying levels. Staff appointed to jobs where proficiency in the local language is essential for their role are offered fulltime language training and many of our locally engaged staff in our Posts overseas are native speakers or are fluent in the local language.

Secondary information