3 Μαν 1989)
THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Sir PATRICK WRIGHT, KCMG, Mr D BLATHERWICK, OBE, Mr D Moss, CMG, Miss C PESTELL, CMG, Mr G GRIFFITHS AND Mr AR PAUL
[Mr Lester Conid]
stay in the service or not. Perhaps I may ask Mr Moss to add a word about the way in which we are trying to cope with this.
(Mr Moss) I think there are no perfect answers to this problem, but broadly speaking we believe that the qualifications and experience of spouses have been an under-utilised resource in the past. For those who are Diplomatic Service officers in their own right we try to find joint postings for the husband and the wife or for the wife and the husband, whichever way it works. We can manage that in a number of cases and I think have a good record on that one. The real problem arises where the spouse is not a Diplomatic Service officer. There we have a number of improvements in train at the moment. We are about to implement a regis- ter of spouses' experience and qualification so we have on record centrally this pool of talent. We are going to require our posts overseas to tell us regularly those jobs that they believe spouses could fill in our overseas missions and, as the Permanent Under Secretary said, we are also asking our mis- sions to improve the possibilities; there are some- times obstacles of various sorts placed in the way of spouses who wish to work when overseas outside the commission in the local economy. On a number of fronts therefore we have improvements in hand that I think will enable the Diplomatic Service better to employ the skills of spouses and to a degree lessen the understandable dissatis- faction of spouses who cannot continue with their own careers when they accompany the officer
overseas.
Chairman
97. Sir Patrick mentioned the idea of compen- sation for loss of spouse's earnings as a thought. Has that been developed as a permanent proposal or is it still a gleam in your eye?
(Sir Patrick Wright) It is a gleam in the eye. It is not something that we have yet carried forward. It may be something at which we shall have to look further. We have achieved some quite remarkable successes in placing both spouses in posts overseas. This is a December total. In the last few years, however, we have had an ambassador serving in West Africa whose husband is working for the West African Development Bank; we have just achieved a joint posting in a post where the husband is a member of the British Diplomatic Service and the wife is a member of another diplomatic service and, by some close liaison, we have actually sent them to the same post within a few months of each other.
Mr Wells
98. That is a triumph!
(Sir Patrick Wright) This is requiring a lot more ability and imagination on the part of the adminis- tration, and I hope that we are responding to it.
Chairman
99. The Committee, as you know, Sir Patrick, in the course of its work visits a number of posts.
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[Continued
While officers in posts invariably are uncomplain- ing, we are left in no doubt that there is a problem as far as spouses are concerned-it is mostly wives, but in some cases it is husbands. We are left in no doubt that there is a very difficult issue and a knotty one to be resolved here. We are very interested to hear that you have full recognition of that and are seeking to tackle it.
I
(Sir Patrick Wright) On a personal note may add that my wife is president of the Diplomatic Service Wives Association, so the problem is con- stantly drawn to my attention!
100. I have one final question on the use of recruitment and greater flexibility in recruitment. This may take you into policy spheres, and you may not wish to answer it in full, but let me try to ask it, Sir Patrick. Given the difficulty of filling ambassadorial posts because of the very problems that we have just been discussing, do you consider making use of retired diplomatic service officers or, indeed, people who have completed successful careers in business outside? Would the Foreign and Commonwealth Office regard it as a bad idea to fill more of these posts by people who had no diplomatic service but were anxious at the com- pletion of a career to do two or three years in the public service filling an ambassadorial post in some country, maybe one of the more remote postings?
(Sir Patrick Wright) May I first question your premise, Mr Chairman. We are not finding diffi- culty in filling ambassadorial posts. In fact, the familiar problem is that we have a number of can- didates for any one post and the difficulty is to choose the right one from among the candidates. We are not actually having any problem at the moment. I hope that my successor's successor will not have to report to you that he or she is finding difficulty in this. We do not therefore have a prob- lem in finding qualified candidates from within. the service to fill posts. Perhaps you would expect me to say as head of the service that I hope the situation will continue where we can continue to find well qualified candidates from within the ser- vice to fill the top posts, but I am very anxious that we should at the slightly lower level-the middle level of the service-expand our exchanges and secondments with industry and with the private sector. We have given the figures in the memor- andum. We have had five inward and five outward secondments with the private sector, with industry, in the last year. These in my view have been outstandingly successful. I should like to expand the programme. In the regular meetings I have with businessmen in the office approximately every three months--we invite some 24 chairmen and managing directors to come into the office and to discuss the service, and in particular what the service can do for export, with them-I have made the point every time of drawing to their attention our wish and readiness to have more secondments/ exchanges with industry. We held a seminar-I may have referred to this last year, Mr Chairman- early last year with the personnel directors of some 70 companies at which we discussed secondment
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