48
3 May 1989]
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE
Sir PATRICK Wright, KCMG, Mr D BLATHERWICK, OBE, Mr D Moss, CMG, Miss C PESTELL, CMG, Mr G GRIFFITHS AND Mr AR PAUL
[Mr Wells Conid] can find to the situation. Better pay would certainly help by including some compensation for the loss of spouse earnings which, as I say, I think is a factor. We are working hard on ways of helping spouses in the service to pursue independent careers and, indeed, to pursue work in the Diplo- matic Service, for instance, as locally engaged staff in posts abroad or working sometimes part-time in the office at home. We have taken up both in the Commonwealth and in the European Community the inhibitions that some governments put on spouses of diplomats working in capitals abroad. I hope very much that we can get some relaxation. We have already achieved some relaxation in some countries to those inhibitions.
Mr Jopling
91. I was particularly concerned about the very large loss in 7D and 8 which were recent fast stream entrants. Could Sir Patrick go a little more deeply into the reasons why that figure is so very high?
(Sir Patrick Wright) Perhaps I may ask Mr Moss whether he has anything to add on that. Of course, someone joining the Foreign Office knows what salary he will receive so it can hardly be that he discovers after two weeks of coming to the office that he is getting a salary lower than he expected. I think it probably is true that young people joining the service and seeing what their peers are getting in the City or in the private sector-in particular discovering that some of the perks, if I may put it that way, that are available in the private sector are not available in the public sector-may for that reason have second thoughts and decide to leave.
92. If I may say so, that number in 1988 was in the full year following the Stock Exchange crash when people were being flung out of the City like litter?
(Sir Patrick Wright) Yes, I know.
(Mr Moss) I cannot add a great deal to that. We talk to every member of the Diplomatic Service, not just in the fast stream, who decides to resign. We ask them the reasons and they vary, as the Permanent Under Secretary has said. We listed the reasons within the Foreign Office administration. They include above all the mobility requirement and dissatisfaction with pay. For these fast stream entrants my impression-it is not more than that is that during the first year of service they became more aware of the divergence between the pay rates that we are able to offer and those avail- able to their peers outside and that, combined with long working hours in the Foreign Office, I think led some of them to conclude that they would wish to pursue careers outside. However, one cannot pin down a single factor even for these eight.
Mr Wells
93. Do you think that it is any reason for you to look at the way in which you receive and induct these people into your operations?
(Sir Patrick Wright) Certainly, and we pay a lot of attention to that. The training arrangements for new entrants I think have been varied quite
[Continued
considerably in the last few years. I am sure we should continue to look at that in case the seat of the trouble lies there.
94. You are not insisting that they follow exactly joined the Foreign Office? the same painful route that you followed when you
(Sir Patrick Wright) Well, I do not think it has been painful!
Mr Lester
95. This subject is one I have been pursuing particularly in terms of the changing events that happen in people's lives, whether they are in the Foreign Office or not. One matter that surprised me was that when you interviewed new entrants their wives and their qualifications are not part of that interview. It would appear to me that many graduates, and they have an equal right to a career people now entering the foreign service marry
as their husbands. One sees the pressure emerging for wives in a particular posting in an area where there are no facilities and where, even if they do get a job that satisfies them, they find the long leave breaks their terms and conditions and they cannot settle down to a university or whatever. I wonder able rethink about the whole basis. I know other whether you do not really need to have a consider- diplomatic services do not require spouses to live advantages that are given in terms of boarding abroad and do not necessarily link some of the
school and so on to the fact that the wife lives abroad. Ought you perhaps to be thinking today of a wholly different sort of intake where both parties are entitled to a career and the terms and con- ditions of service reflect that?
(Sir Patrick Wright) In the way in which we handle postings and placements in the service the position of the spouse, the qualifications of the spouse, and, indeed, the readiness of the spouse to travel will play an increasing part, and we are going to work on this. If I may I will ask Mr Moss to expand on that in a moment. I do not think at the recruitment point either the Civil Service Commis- sion or ourselves would want to regard the qualifi- cation of the spouse as part of the recruitment process. It is something one could look at, but it would be a very new approach to recruitment.
96. It is not a question of refusing them, but if you have a wife who is a barrister it is fair to assume that at some stage in her life she might want to practise her career as a barrister, and at least you know that to begin with?
(Sir Patrick Wright) Indeed, and I think this is something, without discouraging people from joining the Diplomatic Service, that we need to get better understood, that is, the limitations that a fully mobile service puts on its members. It is of course drawn to people's attention when they join the Diplomatic Service that unlike people coming to the home Civil Service they are undertaking a full obligation to mobility. This is something that people have to take into account in their family life and, indeed, in their decisions as to whether they