The Role of the FCO in UK Government

Published on 12 May 2011 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited

House of Commons

Foreign Affairs Committee

The Role of the FCO in UK Government

Seventh Report of Session 2010–12

Volume II

Additional written evidence

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published 24 November, 8 and 15 December, 12 and 19 January, 2 and 9 February, 9 March and 27 April

The Foreign Affairs Committee

The Foreign Affairs Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its associated agencies.

Current membership

Richard Ottaway (Conservative, Croydon South) (Chair) Rt Hon Bob Ainsworth (Labour, Coventry North East) Mr John Baron (Conservative, Basildon and Billericay) Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell (Liberal Democrats, North East Fife) Rt Hon Ann Clwyd (Labour, Cynon Valley) Mike Gapes (Labour, Ilford South) Andrew Rosindell (Conservative, Romford) Mr Frank Roy (Labour, Motherwell and Wishaw) Rt Hon Sir John Stanley (Conservative, Tonbridge and Malling) Rory Stewart (Conservative, Penrith and The Border) Mr Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)

The following Member was also a member of the Committee during the parliament: Emma Reynolds (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)

Powers

The Committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk.

Publication

The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including news items) are on the internet at www.parliament.uk/facom. A list of Reports of the Committee in the present Parliament is at the front of this volume. The Reports of the Committee, the formal minutes relating to that report, oral evidence taken and some or all written evidence are available in a printed volume. Additional written evidence may be published on the internet only.

Committee staff

The current staff of the Committee are Dr Robin James (Clerk), Mr Eliot Barrass (Second Clerk), Ms Adèle Brown (Committee Specialist), Dr Brigid Fowler (Committee Specialist), Mr Richard Dawson (Senior Committee Assistant), Jacqueline Cooksey (Committee Assistant), Mrs Catherine Close (Committee Assistant) and Mr Alex Paterson (Media Officer).

Contacts

All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Foreign Affairs Committee, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 6394; the Committee’s email address is [email protected]

List of additional written evidence

(published in Volume II on the Committee’s website www.parliament.uk/facom)

Page

1 Dr Scott James Ev w1

2 Dr Oliver Daddow Ev w5

3 The Rt Hon Lord Owen CH Ev w9

4 Professor Daryl Copeland Ev w13

5 Dr Graeme Davies and Dr Robert Johns Ev w17

6 Sir Edward Clay KCMG Ev w26

7 Charles Crawford CMG Ev w29

8 The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Ev w35

9 Professor Tony Chafer Ev w38

10 Professor Ritchie Robertson, Professor Sarah Colvin and Dr Peter Thompson Ev w39

11 LSE IDEAS Ev w40

12 City of London Corporation Ev w40

13 UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum (UKOTCF) Ev w42

14 Society for Italian Studies Ev w45

15 Anthony Aust Ev w45

16 Oliver Miles CMG Ev w47

17 Sir Michael Wood KCMG Ev w48

18 Sir John Graham GCMG Ev w51

19 Sir David Logan KCMG Ev w51

20 Daniel Korski Ev w54

21 Catarina Tully Ev w57

22 Rt Hon Jack Straw MP Ev w59

23 Peter W Marshall and other former members of the FCO Ev w60

24 Sir Peter Marshall KCMG CVO Ev w62

25 Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Ev w85

26 Professor Hussein Kassim Ev w89

27 Professor Dr Sonja Puntscher Riekmann Ev w92

28 The Rt Hon Chris Huhne MP Ev w93

29 Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) Ev w93; w104

30 Carne Ross Ev w95

31 Lord Howe of Aberavon CH Ev w96

Organisational charts (as of January 2011):

National Security Secretariat, Cabinet Office Ev w107

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ev w108

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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev w1

Written evidence

Written evidence from Dr Scott James, King’s College London

THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE FCO IN THE UK EU POLICY-MAKING PROCESS

Introduction

The research and recommendations contained in this report are drawn from a doctoral research project titled“Singing from the Same Hymn Sheet? Europeanisation and European Policy Making in the UK and Irish CoreExecutives, 1997–2007” completed at the University of Manchester between 2005 and 2008, and subsequentresearch conducted at King’s College London during 2009. The findings are based largely upon the detailedtestimonies of 60 serving and former ministers, senior and junior officials, and special advisors drawn fromacross the main departments of state. The interviews were conducted on a non-attributable basis according toChatham House rules. The research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and is to bepublished as a monograph by Manchester University Press in 2011.1

Executive Summary— Since 2001 the EU policy making process in the UK has undergone fundamental reform,

strengthening the strategic capabilities of the Cabinet Office to the extent that it has become thePrime Minister’s first source of advice and expertise on EU policy.

— Although the FCO retains important formal responsibilities for managing EU policy, its role andinfluence within Whitehall has been challenged by three developments: increasing EU expertiseand networking by departmental policy leads; rationalisation and reorganisation within the FCO’sEurope Directorate; and the waning influence of the formal EU cabinet sub-committee.

— These changes are driven in part by longer-term structural developments that have underminedforeign ministries across Europe: the growing importance and frequency of European Councilsummits; the increasingly technical and specialist nature of EU policy dossiers; and the tendencyto reach preliminary agreements through informal pre-Council discussions.

— The FCO has responded by developing a niche role which seeks to add value to UK EU policy inthree respects: by reallocating resources to the UK Permanent Representation in Brussels (UKRep);maintaining and exploiting the UK’s wider diplomatic network of European embassies; and leadingefforts to encourage departments to engage more effectively with EU counterparts.

— The reforms have had three unintended consequences: exacerbating the existing conflict of interestbetween the Cabinet Office’s coordination and strategic roles; further blurring the division ofresponsibilities for EU policy within and between the Cabinet Office and FCO; and contributingto bureaucratic overload by raising expectations beyond that which could be realistically met.

— The report recommends that the FCO should concentrate at what it is best at, namely strengtheningits wider diplomatic network, renewing efforts across Whitehall to promote more effective strategicnetworking, and refocusing its activities on formulating and articulating a clearer strategic visionfor European integration.

— It also recommends that collaboration between the Cabinet Office and FCO could be reinforcedby convening a new inter-ministerial committee on EU policy strategy to be chaired by the PrimeMinister; and by redefining the role and position of the Minister for Europe so that they are basedin both the Cabinet Office and FCO.

Detailed Submission

Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office

1. The role of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the management of national EU policy haschanged fundamentally over the past decade. For most of the time since the UK’s accession in 1973, the FCOhas been at the heart of the process and, crucially, has remained the principal source of foreign policy adviceon EU affairs to the prime minister. Traditionally this has taken the form of two private secretaries secondedfrom the FCO to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). By contrast the European Secretariat (COES) and theOverseas and Defence Secretariat (ODS) in the Cabinet Office have traditionally focused on Whitehallcoordination.2

2. In 2001 Tony Blair decided to establish a stronger “in house” foreign policy capability within the PMO,leading to the merger of the positions of private secretary and head of the Cabinet Office secretariat. Thiscreated a new “Advisor on EU Affairs and Head of the Cabinet Office European Secretariat” and an “Advisoron Foreign Affairs and Head of the Overseas and Defence Secretariat”. Both had offices located within No.10and were promoted to the rank of permanent secretary. In addition, a small team of four foreign policy advisorswas established within the PMO composed of secondees from the FCO and experts from outside government.By contrast arrangements for domestic policy remained largely unchanged.

3. The real significance of these changes has been the extent to which they have reshaped patterns of powerdependency at the centre of the Whitehall EU policy network. The COES now serves as the Prime Minister’s

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Ev w2 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence

first source of advice and expertise on EU policy. Around two thirds of its workload is now prescriptive anddevoted to delivering the Prime Minister’s priorities across government, with only one third expended ontraditional coordination or dispute resolution. Although departments have become less reliant on COES forcoaching, monitoring and advice, its capacity to provide strategic direction has been greatly enhanced as aconsequence of the perception that it is much closer to the PMO than other Cabinet Office secretariats and isviewed as an instrument of the Prime Minister’s will across Whitehall. As a result, departments increasinglylook towards it for a guide as to what policy line to pursue in Europe.3 The increasing burden and expectationsthat this generates has in turn necessitated a near doubling in the size of the secretariat since the late 1990s.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

4. The FCO retains important formal responsibilities in the management of UK EU policy, including:outlining the government’s overarching European strategy, providing briefings for ministers prior to keyCouncil meetings, and chairing the cabinet sub-committee on EU policy. In several important respects howeverthis traditional coordinating role has been challenged as a consequence of three developments.

5. First, the continued value of the FCO to other departments is inversely related to their internal capacityfor diplomatic expertise. For well-resourced departments with extensive bilateral connections and experienceof lobbying (notably the Treasury, BIS and DEFRA) interaction with home-based FCO officials is minimal.But as engagement and networking by other departments has increased over the past decade (driven, in part,by the 1998 Step Change programme [see below]), so their dependency on the FCO for advice and supporthas declined.

6. Second, this trend has contributed to a major reorganisation of European business within the FCO. Since2004 the internal and external aspects of EU policy have been centralised within a single Europe Directorateorganised around thematic rather than geographical structures. The introduction of this “lead unit” systemmeans that responsibility for managing bilateral relations with EU member states are divided between severalpolicy-focused groups. But it has also led to the further rationalisation of country-specific expertise. This isreflected in the fact that although the Europe Directorate briefly expanded in response to the 2005 UK EUPresidency, staff numbers have since been cut back significantly and resources redeployed to “front line”diplomats based in overseas embassies.

7. Third, the cabinet sub-committee on EU policy is widely perceived as a “rubber stamp” for decisionseffectively taken elsewhere: not least through the informal Joint Ministerial Committee (Europe) whichincorporates representatives from the devolved governments, and the Cabinet Office “Friday” meeting whichis chaired by the Prime Minister’s EU policy advisor to serve as a “clearing house” for all EU-related issues.By 2004 the committee was struggling to attract a high level of attendance from cabinet ministers, and washenceforth convened in “virtual” form as a mechanism through which EU policy was formally cleared throughwritten correspondence. Since then however the sheer pace and volume of EU-related correspondence hascaused the system to become severely overloaded and detrimental to effective decision making.

8. Far from being an isolated example, the changes at the heart of the UK EU policy making process reflectthree longer-term structural developments at the European level which have served to empower primeminister’s/cabinet offices and disempower foreign ministries across the EU. First, the pace of integration inareas of “high” politics (such as defence, security, economic, employment and immigration policy) has forcedheads of government to play an increasingly prominent role in the management of EU policy acrossgovernment. The growing frequency of European Council summits since 2002 has also served to usurp therole of the General Affairs Council, which is composed of national foreign ministers, in coordinating EUbusiness.4 Second, the reach of EU competence into highly technical areas of domestic policy (driven by theLisbon Strategy) means that policy leads are far less amenable to having their preferences subsumed to thoseof wider diplomatic prerogatives. Third, although foreign ministries continue to brief ministers prior to Councilmeetings, this masks the extent to which the real decisions are increasingly taken in informal pre-Councildiscussions led by national permanent representatives or prime ministerial “sherpas” (commonly a seniorofficial that serves as EU policy advisor to a head of government). This is a response to the unwieldy andinefficient nature of formal ministerial Councils and COREPER meetings since the 2004 enlargement.5

Added value

9. The FCO has proved relatively relaxed about the encroachment of the Cabinet Office and otherdepartments on its traditional diplomatic territory. This is for two reasons. Firstly, the sheer volume andcomplexity of EU business today limits the capacity of any single department to steer substantive policy.Second, the FCO lacks the authority and legitimacy within Whitehall to guide policy, intervene in negotiationsand/or arbitrate in disputes.

10. The FCO has responded to this new reality by trying to carve out a niche role for itself. It increasinglyseeks to “add value” to UK EU policy by contributing a distinct diplomatic perspective, rather than attemptingto claw back the strategic and advisory functions that have been lost to the Cabinet Office. It does so in threemain ways: supporting and strengthening the role of permanent representatives; maintaining a wider diplomaticnetwork; and facilitating networking by policy leads with EU counterparts.

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11. Firstly, the FCO’s most important role in UK EU policy making today is through the management of theformal interface between Whitehall and the rest of the EU. Paradoxically the main beneficiary of the FCO’sdeclining role within Whitehall has been the UK Permanent Representation to Brussels (UKRep). It has doubledin size since the mid-1990s as resources have been reallocated away from London in order to keep pace withfour demands: further enlargement (which increases the number of countries the UK must lobby), pressurefrom the devolved governments for increased representation, expanding EU competence into new areas ofpolicy, and enhanced EU engagement by home departments. It has also been indirectly strengthened as aconsequence of the changes within the Cabinet Office. Although formally accountable to the Foreign Secretary,the Permanent Representative tends to answer directly to the Prime Minister’s Office as a result of the weeklymeeting that is convened with the Prime Minister’s EU policy advisor. This has been reinforced by the factthat the two now meet as “equals”, ostensibly because the head of the COES has been promoted to the samerank (permanent secretary).

12. Second, the FCO’s wider network of European embassies have become more, not less, important in theEU decision making process. As a consequence of further enlargement, key discussions and deal making isincreasingly conducted in national capitals prior to formal meetings in Brussels. Overseas attaches thereforeserve as a vital source of access (to other governments), intelligence (on member state negotiating positions)and assistance (with lobbying activities). At home departments compete for their time and attention—copyingthem into intra-departmental communications, providing them with regular briefings, and/or arranging periodicmeetings—thereby integrating them further into the domestic policy process. This has been reinforced overrecent years through advances in new communication technology (email and videoconferencing).

13. Finally, the FCO’s role was enhanced in 1998 as it gained responsibility for driving forward the “StepChange” programme, aimed at underpinning the development of a more constructive European policy bystrengthening networking between Whitehall policy leads with their EU counterparts. This entailed monitoring,encouraging and occasionally cajoling ministers and officials to engage more intensively with their oppositenumbers. In practical terms this involved monitoring progress through the use of “grids” which listed thenumber of bilateral trips departments had made or planned, and the use of peer pressure through the circulationof informal league tables. Within Whitehall the programme also took the form of training seminars androadshows which sought to raise awareness of the importance of networking for strengthening the UK’sinfluence. It has also continued to provide important logistical support to departments—such as expertise onmember states and the EU institutions, assisting with the development of lobbying and negotiating strategies,and through the promotion of public diplomacy at home.

Unintended consequences

14. The reform of EU policy making has given rise to three unintended consequences that risk underminingthe UK’s capacity to exert influence in Brussels. First, the potential conflict of interest that exists between theEuropean Secretariat’s traditional coordinating role and its enhanced strategic role has been exacerbated. Thisnecessitates treading a fine line between impartial inter-departmental brokerage and driving forward the PrimeMinister’s agenda, particularly where No.10’s views are at odds with the wider Whitehall consensus.

15. Second, the division of responsibilities for EU policy within and between the Cabinet Office and FCOhave become increasingly blurred. On the one hand, the strengthening of the former’s capacity to provide EUpolicy strategy and advice duplicates the traditional role of the FCO. On the other hand, the reorganisation ofbusiness within the Europe Directorate around policy lead units simply mirrors the role of desk officers in theCOES. Moreover, rather than fully integrate bilateral responsibility into the new policy teams, the FCO hassimply opted to overlay the new vertical thematic division of labour with the old horizontal geographicaldivision of labour. Because policy teams are also responsible for relations with different member states, twoteams can often appear responsible for a particular issue at the same time (such as a ministerial visit), basedeither on their policy specialism or bilateral responsibility. This failure to clearly define responsibility forstrategy, coordination and communication contributed to the duplication of functions and bureaucratic overloadduring the 2005 UK EU Presidency.

16. Third, by attempting to create a prime minister’s department in all but name, the reforms have raisedexpectations beyond that which could be realistically met. Although the Cabinet Office’s role has beenincreased, its resource base has failed to keep pace with the demands of integration and policy leads. It alsoremains too focused on short-term political imperatives and prone to being buffeted by day-to-day events toprovide effective strategic direction for EU policy. This has had the effect of reinforcing its relationship ofdependency with the PMO. Yet the latter’s capacity to provide the necessary political leadership is itselfcontingent on the limited time and attention that the Prime Minister can devote to EU issues. Again, many ofthese failings were apparent during the 2005 EU Presidency as the Cabinet Office tended to over-plan butunder-prepare: focused on agreeing and monitoring the delivery of departmental presidency objectives at theexpense of strategic preparation, risk management and “horizon scanning” for potential problems.



Recommendations

The FCO should focus on what it is best at

17. The FCO should concentrate on specialising at what it is good at, rather than seeking to challenge orduplicate the Cabinet Office. This means strengthening existing methods and finding new and innovative waysof adding value to substantive EU policy within Whitehall. It can do so in three main ways. First, the FCOshould seek to maintain and exploit its wider diplomatic network, in both Brussels and other national capitals,as a valuable source of access, intelligence and expertise on other EU member states. This necessitates raisingawareness across Whitehall of the strategic benefits that the embassy network can provide, strengtheningexisting communication systems between home-based policy leads and overseas attaches, and ensuring that thelatter have the requisite policy expertise in order to actively contribute (rather than simply serve as gatekeeper)to technical policy dossiers. It is also likely to require the further reallocation of resources away from Londontowards “front line” embassy staff.

18. Second, the FCO can take the lead across Whitehall in promoting engagement and networking with EUcounterparts. Although the Step Change programme undoubtedly helped to normalise the UK’s relations withEurope, it was flawed in several respects. First, too many officials continue to view Brussels as an obstacle topolicy development rather than an opportunity for policy learning or resolving intractable policy problems.Second, departments tend to pursue a strategy of “promiscuous bilateralism”:6 forging relationships withparticular member states on particular issues, but which can over time serve as a source of irritation to othergovernments. Thirdly, the UK remains relatively poor at high-level political networking by ministers, leavingus isolated from the informal but highly influential political networks within which preliminary Council dealsare increasingly forged. A concerted effort at tackling these impediments necessitates a renewed programmeof networking, using a combination of awareness-raising and peer pressure, which emphasises the longer-termstrategic advantages of relationship-building as a way of fostering trust and confidence, rather than simply asa channel for securing short-term tactical victories. Only the FCO has the expertise and resources to generatesufficient momentum to drive this wider process of cultural change.

19. Finally, the vacuum of strategic thinking on EU policy remains a serious weakness of the UK policyprocess. Although lead departments regularly reflect upon the medium and longer-term prospects, opportunitiesand risks associated with the development of particular policy dossiers at the EU-level, there is little attemptto construct a more joined-up approach across Whitehall. This requires answering several questions. Whichpolicies does the UK consider to be strategic priorities? How can the UK play a more constructive role indriving developments in these areas? What future decisions and events are likely to affect the UK’s aims andambitions? How does the UK government see the EU developing over the next five, 10 and 20 years? Byfailing to address these questions, successive governments have continued to frame the UK’s contribution toEurope almost entirely in terms of defending the national interest. More effective influence in Brussels canonly be secured by formulating a clear and concise strategic narrative that defines a positive vision for Europeanintegration (on foreign policy cooperation, tackling climate change or liberalising energy markets for example)and sets out a constructive role for the UK within it. With its broad strategic overview of UK EU policy, theFCO could maximise its added value by restructuring its home-based Europe Directorate around crafting andarticulating just such a vision.

Closer coordination between the Cabinet Office and FCO is essential

20. At present the division of labour established between the Cabinet Office and FCO remains ambiguous,contributing to bureaucratic overload at the centre. Moreover, strategic coordination of EU policy is hamperedby two problems: the Cabinet Office has become over-dependent on the Prime Minister for political leadershipin order to drive and steer EU policy; while the FCO is constrained from performing this role because longer-term developments at the EU-level have undermined the influence and authority of Foreign Ministers moregenerally. Effective management of UK EU policy can only come through closer collaboration between theCabinet Office and FCO, not through the further centralisation of EU responsibilities in one location or theother. This can be achieved through two significant reforms.

21. First, the Prime Minister should in future chair a high-level inter-ministerial committee on EU policy.This could be achieved either by replacing the Foreign Secretary as chair of the formal cabinet-subcommitteeon EU policy (as is the case in several other EU member states) or through an informal ministerial grouping(as Tony Blair briefly attempted in the run-up to the 2003 review of the “five test” euro assessment). Cruciallythis would provide more effective political momentum and coordination of the UK government’s broader EUstrategy, facilitate the steering of EU policy by providing departments with a much clearer policy lead on keyissues, and add much needed weight behind the FCO’s efforts at facilitating engagement and networking withEU counterparts. This “strategic” EU committee should remain separate from the system of correspondencefor approving EU policy, which also needs to be streamlined. It should also be mirrored at senior official levelthrough the reinstatement of a European Strategy Group (chaired by the Prime Minister’s EU policy advisor),designed to engage in medium and longer-term strategic thinking and planning on EU policy. This activitytends to be marginalised within the Cabinet Office’s “Friday” meeting at present because it is overburdened asa “clearing house” for EU-level negotiations.



22. Second, the position of Minister for Europe could be greatly strengthened. Quite apart from the rapidturnover of incumbents, the position has traditionally suffered from having an ill-defined role and inadequatedepartmental support base. As has been attempted in the past, the position should be re-focused towardsfacilitating the domestic coordination of EU policy: with responsibility for monitoring and scrutinisingdepartments on the transposition of EU legislation, leading the government’s EU public diplomacy, and drivingthe FCO’s efforts at promoting engagement and networking with EU counterparts. In order to strengthen theirinfluence within Whitehall, the UK government could emulate best practice from Ireland by restructuring theposition so that the minister is henceforth based in both the Cabinet Office and FCO. By effectively spanningthe two departments, the minister would be able to draw upon the wider authority and legitimacy that derivesfrom having direct access to the Cabinet Office, while taking advantage of the FCO’s superior knowledge,resources and expertise. They would also greatly facilitate cooperation and collaboration between the two, helpto foster joined-up thinking on strategy and networking, and serve as an early warning system for potentialproblems by guarding against wasteful duplication or competition. The shared ministerial position thereforeconstitutes an innovative solution to an age-old problem: EU policy is neither domestic nor foreign policy, buta complex hybrid of both.

11 November 2010

References1 James, S (2011, forthcoming) Managing Europe from Home: The Changing Face of European Policy Makingunder Blair and Ahern (Manchester, Manchester University Press)

2 See also Bulmer, S and Burch, M. (2009) The Europeanisation of Whitehall: UK Central Government andthe European Union (Manchester: Manchester University Press) for more detail on the traditional role of theCabinet Office and FCO.

3 For further details see Cabinet Office (2002) Cabinet Office Annual Report (London: Stationery Office) andCabinet Office (2003) Cabinet Office Annual Report (London: Stationery Office)

4 See in particular Gomez, R and Peterson, J. (2001) “The EU’s Impossibly Busy Foreign Ministers: ‘No OneIs In Control’”, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 53–74; and Wall, S. (2008) A Stranger inEurope: Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

5 Tallberg, J. (2007) Bargaining Power in the European Council, Report 2007:1 (Sweden: Swedish Institutefor European Policy Studies)

6 Smith, J and Tsatsas, M. (2002) The New Bilateralism: The UK’s Bilateral Relations within the EU (London:Royal Institute for International Affairs)

Written evidence from Dr Oliver Daddow, Loughborough University

Summary of Main Points

1. The FCO should be the principle repository of experience, information and expertise within Whitehall onthe whole gamut of Britain’s external relations.

2. The FCO became marginalised in 1997–2010 by Prime Ministers wishing to exercise more central controlover the machinery of government from Downing Street.

3. The Foreign Office needs to be responsible for providing a clear conceptual basis for British foreignpolicy, bringing issues of “identity” and “ethics” to the fore.

4. Britain has more means at its disposal to shape the international agenda than perhaps it realises.

5. The enduring Churchillian notion that Britain operates in three circles of power and influence was all verywell for 1948; it is not so useful for 2011.

6. We should be wary of William Hague’s claim to be putting the FCO “back where it belongs at the centreof Government”.

7. Hague wants to take the FCO down two paths with policy and personal ramifications. Both present majorchallenges for the department.

8. The two key departments of state, FCO and Treasury, need to work more closely together to pursue sharedgoals for Britain.

9. The FCO’s network of overseas posts should provide three things: advice, early warning and insight.

10. The challenges in explaining foreign policy to the public are twofold: first, devising a coherent messageand second, getting the message across effectively.

11. The Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister should jointly be tasked with presenting the government’svision of British foreign policy.



12. The question of ethics and wider government objectives is sometimes phrased in a way that implies thatattention to the former “gets in the way of” the latter. This need not be the case.

Background on Contributor

Oliver Daddow was educated in PPE at Oxford University and took his MA (with distinction) and PhD fromNottingham University. In 2000–05 he lectured at King’s College London at the UK Defence Academy andsince 2005 he has worked at Loughborough University where he is currently Senior Lecturer in Politics andInternational Relations. In 2010–11 he was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for British Studies,University of California at Berkeley.

His research interests are threefold: first, British foreign policy, especially British-EU relations andEuroscepticism; second, the uses of history in making policy; and third, the language of foreign policy. He haspublished widely across these interests, the most relevant being New Labour and the European Union(Manchester University Press, 2011), Harold Wilson and European Integration (edited, Frank Cass, 2003),Britain and Europe since 1945 (Manchester University Press, 2004) and a co-edited collection based on theproceedings of a two-day conference held at the FCO in February 2010, British Foreign Policy: The NewLabour Years (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). In 2009 he co-edited the International Affairs special issue on TheWar Over Kosovo: Ten Years On, contributing the article on British foreign policy. He is co-editing the BritishJournal of Politics and International Relations 2013 special issue on new approaches to the study of Britishforeign policy, based on a conference held at Berkeley in December 2010. He has published over twenty otherbook chapters and journal articles on these and related issues.

Written Submission

1. The FCO should be the principle repository of experience, information and expertise within

Whitehall on the whole gamut of Britain’s external relations, broadly defined in political, geostrategic andalso economic terms. The difficulties it has encountered in maintaining that role have come from two sources.First, Prime Ministers and their Downing Street teams have taken increasingly high profile roles in making andselling British foreign policy abroad, often over the heads of Foreign Secretaries, or using Foreign Secretariesas mere “ciphers” for policies devised elsewhere within the system. Second, technological and communicationschanges in a globalised world have meant the FCO’s web of embassies and contacts abroad can be by-passed byan interventionist premier wanting to devise policy bilaterally with other leaders, via “flying” visits, conferencetelephone calls, email and so on. Both factors raise serious questions about the FCO’s role and function withinthe system of government in the years ahead.

2. The FCO became marginalised in 1997–2010 by Prime Ministers wishing to exercise more central

control over the machinery of government from Downing Street. Tony Blair increasingly came to ignorethe advice of the FCO because he predicted (correctly) that its natural caution on using military means toachieve foreign policy ends and its attention to taking a UN-sanctioned route (eg, in Kosovo and much moreseriously Iraq) was out of step with the PM’s more interventionist posture on international affairs. Blair wasregularly (and correctly) accused of by-passing Cabinet when making key decisions, but it was his bypassingof the Foreign Office that should be of as much concern if we see the Foreign Office as a source of moderationof some of the potential eccentricities of modern, leader-centred governance (the author has written aninterview-based case study on the “Kosovo effect” on British foreign policy-making in International Affairsvol.85, no.3, 2009; further details can be supplied if necessary). This points up the need for the FCO to beworking as closely as possible at all times with the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office, and forconstructive dialogue on the nature of foreign policy challenges and possible solutions to be as open and frankas possible. Disagreement should not mean that these offices cannot work together effectively as long as thebroad picture and desired direction is clear to both. To be seen to be abiding by the tenets of international lawcan be one way in which the FCO leads on helping Britain once more be seen to be a “good internationalcitizen”, which rather got lost after 2001.

3. The Foreign Office needs to be responsible for providing a clear conceptual basis for British foreign

policy, bringing issues of “identity” and “ethics” to the fore. These factors have been sadly and dangerouslylacking in recent years. The policy framework established by the NSS, the creation of the NSC and the SDSRall continue trends previously ingrained by the New Labour governments, of what appears to be a reactiveapproach to foreign and defence policy-making: define the threat and then make the policy accordingly. Whathappened to devising defence policy from first foreign policy principles (the “baseline” of the 1998 SDR)?Foreign and defence policies now seem to be geared to combating a whole series of “threats” which come inall forms (from international terrorism and environmental degradation) and from all corners of the globe. Thisapproach, valid though it might be in identifying fundamental challenges to the national interest, risks stretchingthe limited resources at Britain’s disposal to breaking point, especially when key allies are facing the samegrievous financial constraints. A “threat” focussed approach to creating foreign policy seems, in fact, to berather missing the point by using up lots of valuable resources listing things which for any rational, thinkingperson are really rather obvious. It is how Britain deals with them and why they have become perceived asthreats that now require urgent attention, and this can only come from a thoroughgoing reconsideration ofBritain’s role on the world stage.



4. Britain has more means at its disposal to shape the international agenda than perhaps it realises,but these means are not just military or economic; they are rooted in British values and its sense of identity.Conventional diplomacy, aided by pulling military and economic levers, is undoubtedly useful. However, theyneed to be operated alongside a more thoroughgoing revision of what it is Britain stands for in the world. NewLabour’s “Cool Britannia” and Robin Cook’s “ethical dimension” to foreign policy (it was not an “ethicalforeign policy” per se) might have been lampooned in some quarters, but at least they made a start in thatdirection. A Foreign Secretary who held the Prime Minister’s ear for longer than Cook did might havesucceeded in integrating issues of ethics more closely into the foreign policy arena (see paragraph 12 below).His relative failure should not mean the end of the matter for the FCO—there was certainly something in it.Post-Iraq there is a more pressing need than ever to refashion tired images of Britain on the global stage as ameans of forging a brighter national and global future. Revivifying the Commonwealth will hardly get pulsesracing around the country.

5. The enduring Churchillian notion that Britain operates in three circles of power and influence was

all very well for 1948; it is not so useful for 2011. Those “hard” power relationships (effectively just a listof Britain’s key allies at one historical juncture) need to sit alongside subtler, sometimes more cautiousdiplomacy that takes account of what identity Britain wants to express globally, and the values it wants to leadin promoting on the world stage. Not all academics and think tanks produce useless “theory” divorced fromthe “reality” of the world situation; much current work is in fact directly targeted at having policy relevance.There is a certain anti-intellectualism within British society in general that pervades also some quarters ofgovernment; compare to the US where the doors between policy and academia are revolving constantly. Thisis not a call for policy-makers to “use” academics to put a gloss or add fake credibility to their policypronouncements, but for a deep and ongoing debate about British foreign policy in the spirit of constructiveengagement on both sides. In reconsidering how to devise practical policy at the nexus of “power”, “identity”and “ethics”, the FCO could deepen its engagement with thinkers outside the department, especially thosecritical of recent trends in British foreign policy, including academics, pressure groups and Non GovernmentalOrganisations. Being “critical” does not mean that these “outsiders” are hostile or opposed to “government”.They are critical because they care.

6. We should be wary of William Hague’s claim to be putting the FCO “back where it belongs at the

centre of Government” if it implies an attempt to recreate the Victorian heyday of Empire via a revivifiedCommonwealth. Does it matter if the FCO is not at the “centre of government” (whatever that means) if it ishelping Britain achieve its national and international objectives? The British obsession with being “central” toeverything is starting to seem more than passé, but outright anachronistic. Times have moved on and newthinking is called for; not the solutions of the past. The paradox in making such a claim is that Hague issimultaneously parroting the government’s obsession with the “network revolution”, picking up all thetechnological changes discussed in paragraph 1, above. Either things have changed, or they have not. And ifthey have: what has changed—and how? The nature of the changes need spelling out because they will helpus identify possible solutions, and how the FCO can help. And if Hague believes they have changed, then newways of managing the FCO’s role in contemporary government are called for. Hague needs to spell out moreclearly, therefore, what he means by “where it belongs”. It is not obvious to me what he means by this.

7. Hague wants to take the FCO down two paths with policy and personal ramifications. Both present

major challenges for the department. From a detailed reading of his speeches since 2009 it appears thatHague first of all wants to involve the FCO in supposedly “forgotten” areas of foreign policy, notably relationswith China, Russia, India, Brazil and so on (the BRIC powers). I would venture that these were not forgottenat all by New Labour, it is just that attention naturally came to settle on the US, Iraq and other “flashpoints”in Britain’s external relations after 2001; note for instance the landmark China Strategy document that waspublished near the end of the New Labour years. Some organisational memory could help Hague appreciatewhere New Labour took Britain and then the FCO could, with him, discuss where best to go next and, critically,think about why. Second, Hague wants to create a more equal and effective partnership between ForeignSecretary and Prime Minister. An admirable objective as far as he personally is concerned, he also has thepolitical weight and leadership experience to pull it off. Something to consider for the future will be howforeign secretaries with less political “clout” fare when faced by an activist PM wanting to dabble in foreignpolicy across the board. How can the FCO recognise this propensity in a leader and maintain a constructiveinput to foreign policy decision-making when faced with that scenario?

8. The two key departments of state, FCO and Treasury, need to work more closely together to pursue

shared goals for Britain, especially as its trade relationships are concerned. Brown’s years at the Treasuryeffectively wrested control over Britain’s Euro policy from the PM and the FCO, severely curtailing whatmight have been a more genuinely pro-European policy on the part of the New Labour governments. Friction,mutual suspicion and tension appear to have been the order of the day and this damaged the government’sability to build a national consensus around a European-focussed foreign policy. The FCO seems to work wellwith DFID, so the two key points of focus for it now should be to get its views heard earlier within DowningStreet and greater, more constructive dialogue going with the Treasury on matters of shared importance. Withinthe FCO, meanwhile, junior ministers should be given the opportunity to genuinely influence the debate. Itseems that this was not always the case under New Labour. For example, how much impact did Ministers forEurope have on British EU policy? Were they listened to, or just ignored? If someone is worth a post of that



significance, they are surely worth listening to, and being asked to justify foreign policy in their realm ofexpertise (see paragraph 11 below).

9. The FCO’s network of overseas posts should provide three things. First, advice and updates on thepolitical situation in the respective countries as they affect the British national interest, materially or otherwise.Second, early warning on specific policy challenges that may need meeting in the immediate future in thecountry or region. Finally, insight into opportunities for greater British involvement in the respective country,but only in so far as that involvement will enhance Britain’s clearly conceptualised national interest via itsforeign policy goals.

10. The challenges in explaining foreign policy to the public are twofold: first, devising a coherent

message and second, getting the message across effectively. Ultimately, however, it will be the governmentas a whole, not the FCO specifically, that discharges an effective message about Britain’s external relations intheir entirety; this requires careful co-ordination across departments and crucially with the Communicationsunit in Downing Street. Basically, most media attention is focussed on what the PM says, followed—albeit away behind—by what the Foreign Secretary and Chancellor say. New Labour badly mixed its messages onforeign policy. It presented Britain as a global player but did not define clearly what that meant. It said it wasa pro-European government but pandered to the Eurosceptical press in denigrating many key aspects of theEU. It did not present a clear appreciation of the history of the British national story after 1945 and lacked theguts to present a European version consistently and coherently. Fatally, it lost trust on the Iraq issue, particularlyafter the “dodgy dossier” which undermined the public’s faith in the communications machinery. Had that beena first year student undergraduate essay it would have failed, not least on the grounds of part-plagiarism!Achieving a coherent message about British foreign policy can only come when the FCO, Downing Street andother interested parties have thought critically about the conceptual basis of foreign policy, and where thegovernment wants to take Britain in the years ahead. The Churchill model will not do.

11. The Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister should jointly be tasked with presenting the

government’s vision of British foreign policy, for example in keynote foreign policy speeches in and aroundthe time of the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet speeches. They should be aided by the relevant junior ministerswhere necessary (on that: does the public understand the role of junior ministers? Raising their profile mightshow more collective decision-making at work, as long as it is genuine and not merely for show). On atechnical note, in research for my New Labour and the EU book the Foreign Office website during the NewLabour years was found to be very badly managed and difficult to navigate. It proved almost impossible tolocate speeches by the Foreign Secretary compared to the ease with which they could be located on theTreasury and Downing Street sites. The FCO website should be much less “clunky”. It is through the speechesthat the visions are communicated, mainly via the media and academics, but also direct to the interested public.Set piece communications events for targeted audiences in and outside the FCO only hit a handful of people;it is the website that most people will encounter on a day to day basis.

12. The question of ethics and wider government objectives is sometimes phrased in a way that implies

that attention to the former “gets in the way of” the latter. This need not be the case, and deeper attentionto the conceptual basis of foreign policy can act as a corrective to this simplistic view of the place of ethics incontemporary foreign policy-making. I quote here from the introduction (co-authored with Jamie Gaskarth) toour forthcoming co-edited collection on British foreign policy 1997–2010: “If policymakers are going to pursuepolicies, from measures against climate change and global terrorism to preventing genocide and supportingeconomic development, they will have to cooperate with a range of actors beyond the Commonwealth, Europeand the Anglophone states. Some of these actors will have poor human rights records, a different conceptionof world order and society than the UK, and may be much more powerful than the UK, militarily, economicallyand politically. Incorporating identity, ethics and power into the decision-making process will allow the deciderto appreciate the full implications of policy both domestically and internationally. Each will interact to allowa larger sense of what the costs and benefits are of allying with powerful states that do not share Britain’svalues, of pursuing ‘ethical’ interventions abroad, of constructing a role for the UK in the world that places itin a position of leadership and responsibility.” In sum, what we are saying in that book is that greater attentionto the ethical component of foreign policy is not a distraction from the “real” issues of trade and security, butare fundamental to Britain’s ability to pursue its global objectives. Thinking of ethics and the national interestin zero-sum terms does a disservice to the synergistic relations between them and therefore obscures theundoubtedly vital role Britain can play in leading on global values. The problem for the FCO is making thatcase in an era since Iraq and when the expenses scandal has further damaged the faith of the public in whatpoliticians say and do. Restoring the public’s “trust” in public servants could certainly be aided by an upgradingof the ethical component as a driver of British foreign policy because it could help generate a new consensusaround Britain’s role in the world and help put some of the shine back on Britain’s tarnished image on theglobal stage. A “good international citizen” has more credit in the bank than a “bad” one, and such reputationscan be won and lost very easily, as the New Labour years demonstrated all too effectively.

18 November 2010



Written evidence from The Rt Hon Lord Owen CH

David Owen was a Member of Parliament for 26 years from 1966–92. Under Labour Governments, heserved as Navy Minister, Health Minister and Foreign Secretary. From 1992–95 Lord Owen served as EUpeace negotiator in the former Yugoslavia. He currently sits as a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords. Hisbusiness interests include director of Abbott Laboratories Inc and Hyperdynamics Corporation and Chairmanof Europe Steel. He was formerly Chairman of Yukos International, Global Natural Energy and a director ofCoats Viyella.

Summary of Evidence

— The National Security Council should be put on a statutory basis to ensure it is a sustainedinnovation. Legislation should enshrine:

— the specific personal responsibility of the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary for theoverall Ministerial control of the intelligence agencies; and

— the over-arching role of the Foreign Secretary in relation to the UK membership of the UnitedNations, and in particular our permanent membership of the Security Council, NATO and theCommonwealth clarifying the relationship with the MOD and DFID.

— Our shocking record of incompetence over the last decade in foreign and security policy at manylevels will not begin to be set right if we focus only on Ministerial decisions and do not attemptto correct, in the case of the Diplomatic Service, its overriding culture of wanting, not justacquiescing in, ever greater integration within the EU.

— We have no interest in damaging or destabilizing the euro even though the UK should stay outsidethe eurozone. The smooth working between the eurozone and the non eurozone within the EU isin the interests of all Member States. The UK coalition government, in this context, is right to takespecial measures to help Ireland facing grave difficulties within the eurozone.

1. Though there are matters of detail that I will briefly touch on, the main thrust of my evidence is tofocus on Question 1 on “What is the FCO’s role in UK Government?” and the “creation of the NationalSecurity Council”.

2. I begin by asking how we can put right the defects in the working relationship between the ForeignSecretary and the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister and No 10 that have been revealed in many differentways during the Prime Ministership of Tony Blair, but particularly from 2001–07.

3. The Blair presidential style is not a totally new problem. There are at least three major warnings from thelast hundred years of the adverse consequences of concentrating the determination of foreign policy in No 10with a Prime Minister.

4. The first warning comes from the period of 1921–22 when Lloyd George’s personal diplomacy meant thatthe then Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon’s role and that of Foreign Office advice was greatly diminished on anumber of Treaty negotiations to the detriment of British interests. Lord Curzon, however, put up with everyform of humiliation in order to stay in office. Sadly he was not the last Foreign Secretary to adopt sucha posture.

5. The second warning comes from 1937 when Neville Chamberlain began to bypass the Foreign Secretary,Anthony Eden, over Anglo-Italian rapprochement. Then Chamberlain without consulting Eden in 1938 poureda “douche of cold water” on President Roosevelt’s proposal for Anglo-American cooperation. Eden’s braveresignation, sadly, had little effect on Chamberlain’s dominance in developing the policy of appeasement.Eventually when Lord Halifax, stiffened by Cadogan, the then Permanent Secretary in the Foreign Office,criticized the Godesberg demands in Cabinet on 25 September 1938, it still did not stop Chamberlain flyingoff to sign the Munich Agreement.

6. The third warning came from the handling of the Suez Crisis by Prime Minister Anthony Eden. As themonths went by following the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Eden became ever more controlling of foreignpolicy. This was highlighted by him summoning the then Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, to return overnightfrom New York, where he was negotiating with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, only to immediately fly outwith Eden to France to meet the French Prime Minister Guy Mollet. At that meeting Eden confirmed that ifan Anglo-French clandestine agreement that Israel would attack Egypt took place Britain would intervenemilitarily on the Canal with France. This momentous decision was taken with no time for the Foreign Secretaryto be advised by officials of the consequences of denying any prior involvement for relations with the UnitedStates and the Arab world.

7. It will be argued by some that a similar bypassing of the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office tookplace under the Prime Ministership of Margaret Thatcher. I do not think that the Thatcher period came anywherenear as far in undermining the collective handling of foreign policy as the Tony Blair period. In my judgementthe best, briefest, and fairest, description of Margaret Thatcher’s relationship with the Foreign Secretary andthe Foreign Office comes from the concluding chapter of Sir Percy Cradock’s book, In Pursuit of British



Interests,1 pp. 200–210. Over Rhodesia, the Single Market, Hong Kong and China, as well as Germanreunification, the Prime Minister’s initial positions were substantially modified and Cradock as her foreignpolicy adviser from 1984–90 was in a unique position to assess relations between the FCO and No 10. Anotherinsight comes from a former Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir John Coles, in his book,Making Foreign Policy,2 pp. 38–39.

8. The years of Tony Blair’s Prime Ministership, in relation to foreign and security policy, has already beenanalysed in the report on intelligence under the Chairmanship of Lord Butler. It will soon be reported on moregenerally by the Inquiry chaired by Sir John Chilcot. I have written a chapter entitled “The Ever GrowingDominance of No 10 in British Diplomacy” in British Diplomacy: Foreign Secretaries Reflect3 and a chapteron “Bush, Blair and the War in Iraq” in In Sickness and In Power.4

9. Amongst the mass of information on the handling of the aftermath of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions,the Committee might find it useful to focus attention on two specific illustrative aspects of the decision makingbetween the Foreign Office and No 10 in the Blair period. Both have, hitherto, received, in my judgement,insufficient attention though this may be corrected, in part at least, by the report of the Chilcot Inquiry.

10. Firstly, the handling of the second UN Resolution from early January 2003 until 8 March when it becameapparent that the French Government had counted the votes in the UN Security Council more precisely allalong than the UK Government and that the six undecided countries, Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexicoand Pakistan, would not support the UK’s advocacy of a second Resolution. It has been a long standing practicethat the Foreign Secretary is the main determinant on how the UK positions itself in the Security Councilrelying on an assessment made within the Foreign Office of other countries’ voting intentions by a specialistunit drawing on all available information. Though of course the Permanent Representative’s Mission in NewYork plays a key role, it cannot be the sole source of guidance. In many cases it is essential to have a feedbackfrom the Member States’ capital and to rely for this not just on the British Mission in that country butsometimes information from the intelligence services. Did such a system operate in 2003? To what extent werejudgements made inside No 10 rather than in the FCO?

11. Secondly, the handling of the de-Ba’athification and the disbandment of the Iraqi army. Also the memoof our then Ambassador in Egypt, John Sawers, on 11 May 2003 suggesting bringing the British 16th AirAssault Brigade in Iraq, but due to return home, to Baghdad, also supported by Major General Albert Whitley,the most senior British officer with US land forces, serving in the US Headquarters of Lt General DavidMcKiernon. De-Ba’athification was an area of policy on which the Foreign Office had considerable knowledge,particularly from the time in 1990–1991 when detailed consideration was given as to whether or not the BritishGovernment would support going on from liberating Kuwait to using armed force to take Baghdad anddismantle by force Saddam Hussein’s command and control of Iraq. The reasons why it became an agreedpolicy between the US and UK under President Bush and Prime Minister John Major not to do so at that timewas highly relevant to the necessary preparation of planning for the aftermath of the military invasion of Iraqin 2003. Yet not only does it appear that there was an insufficient input from the FCO but one official hasrecalled “I don’t think that the Prime Minister felt he had to take any more of a personal interest in stabilizingIraq. He was leaving it all to the Americans.”5 The Sawers’ memo was of immense potential importance,coming from someone who had been asked to go to Baghdad as the Special Emissary of the Prime Minister.According to Anthony Seldon “when Blair heard the plan, he gave his full backing. But nothing happened. Itran into the implacable opposition of Michael Walker who had succeeded (Admiral Sir Michael) Boyce asChief of the Defence Staff”.6 Yet this was one of the rare moments when a British decision to deploy Britishforces into Baghdad could have had a profound effect on the continued success of the US/UK militaryoperation. Had the Prime Minister ensured such a deployment was implemented it would have been virtuallyimpossible for President George W Bush not to have increased American forces in Baghdad as well. The USDefense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, would also not have been allowed by the President to bring home the16,000 soldiers of the 1st Calvary Division. How did the decision-making procedures in No 10 relating to thisrequest operate? Why did no UK deployment result?

12. The coalition government established on 12 May 2010 a new National Security Council (NSC) to overseeall aspects of Britain’s security as their response to perceived failings in the previous arrangements. The PrimeMinister, David Cameron, appointed Sir Peter Ricketts (Permanent Under Secretary at the FCO) as his NationalSecurity Adviser, a new role based in the Cabinet Office and charged him with establishing the new Council’sstructures and to coordinate and deliver the government’s international security agenda. The Council is chairedby the Prime Minister and its permanent members are the Deputy Prime Minister, the Secretary of State forForeign and Commonwealth Affairs, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the Secretary ofState for Defence, the Secretary of State for International Development and the Security Minister. Other CabinetMinisters and the Chief of Defence Staff and Heads of intelligence services attend as required.1 Percy Cradock, In Pursuit of British Interests: Reflections on Foreign Policy under Margaret Thatcher and John Major (London:

John Murray, 1997), supplied to the Committee in hard copy.2 John Coles, Making Foreign Policy: A Certain Idea of Britain (London: John Murray, 2000), supplied to the Committee in hard

copy.3 Ed. Graham Ziegner, British Diplomacy: Foreign Secretaries Reflect (London: Politico’s, 2007)4 David Owen, In Sickness and In Power: Illness in Heads of Government during the last 100 years (London: Methuen, 2008)5 Anthony Seldon Blair Unbound (London: Simon & Schuster, 2007) p 1916 Ibid, Anthony Seldon, pp 189–190



13. Sir Peter Ricketts reported to a meeting in Chatham House on 21 October 2010 on how this NSC processwas working. He described in a published document, the NSC as “classic cabinet committee government asfar as I am concerned. But the key thing is that the Prime Minister is driving it” ….. “That, in itself, drivesWhitehall because if departments can see that there is a prime minister–chaired committee meetingsystematically, taking decisions on national security issues, then Whitehall pays attention.” The Prime Ministerhas regularly chaired weekly meetings and the Chief of Defence Staff, the Chairman of the JIC and the headsof the intelligence agencies have normally attended NSC meetings. In this sense the NSC is different fromprevious Cabinet sub-committees.

14. The NSC clearly has important implications for the role of the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office.It should ensure that they cannot be sidelined by the Prime Minister as has happened before and the veryexistence of an NSC could enhance the FCO’s role. Sir Peter Ricketts mentioned, for example, that jointworking on conflict prevention and on stabilisation has meant that “we have found more money for the conflictpools in Whitehall, most of it coming from the DFID budget but to be useful, you have to have not just DFIDmoney which has to be spent under the ODA (Official Development Assistance) rules set by the OECD, butalso money from other Departments for more military training and the military assistance programmes forwhich ODA money does not qualify. So you need a mix of it, and it needs to be flexible and as rapidly usableas possible.” There appears to be scope in the context of the NSC for the FCO and DFID to operate in a moreintegrated way. At present the separation of their activities seems less cost effective and driven by an agendawhich appears to want separation for its own sake and is suspicious of sharing tasks and facilities. We cannotturn the clock back to the situation in 1977 when I was sworn in as Minister of Overseas Development as wellas Secretary of State although Judith Hart was responsible for overseas development and able to attend Cabinet.We have, however, lost something important in the Foreign Secretary’s dual role and it is worth the Committeeexamining this area to see if a more structured relationship can be achieved. There are no doubt many questionsabout the NSC which the Committee will also wish to tease out in oral evidence from Ministers and officials.But I wish to highlight one matter.

15. First and foremost, in order to be sure that the NSC represents a real and sustained innovation and notone subject to the whim of a particular Prime Minister, as the Cabinet Committee structure has been, Irecommend that the Foreign Affairs Select Committee examines whether the NSC should be put on a statutorybasis. This would make it very difficult in the future for any Prime Minister to bypass the NSC without firsthaving the legislative authority to do so.

16. As part of that legislation the Committee might wish to consider some aspects of the statutory role ofthe Foreign Affairs Minister in the Dutch government. There is much to be said, in my view, for defining therole of the Foreign Secretary in legislation covering the National Security Council and some other Ministers’roles. In particular I think it is very necessary, in view of the private wish and pressure from many formerPrime Ministers to take over responsibility for MI6 and MI5, to enshrine in NSC legislation the specificpersonal responsibility for the overall Ministerial control of these agencies to the Foreign Secretary and to theHome Secretary. These responsibilities, it should also be made clear, are not ones that can or should bedelegated to other Ministers within their Departments.

17. It would be worth clarifying in relation to the MOD and DFID the over-arching role of the ForeignSecretary in relation to the UK membership of the United Nations and in particular our permanent membershipof the Security Council, also our membership of NATO and of the Commonwealth. In relation to the UN andthe Committee’s Question 5 “What should be the role of the FCO’s network of overseas posts”, I believestrongly that the closure of Missions in UN member states must stop. There is a need for the permanentmembers to keep in direct contact with all member states and narrowing UK representation in the MemberStates is of itself damaging to our credibility as a permanent member.

18. Inevitably the conduct of UK government policy in relation to membership of the European Union,because so much of its activity relates to domestic affairs, will have to extend across many departments. Thisis best coordinated, therefore, by the Cabinet Office and the present system should continue where the PrimeMinister of the day determines the cabinet committee structures for dealing with EU matters and whichMinisters should chair such committees when they are not being chaired by the Prime Minister. But it isnevertheless a fact of life that EU membership has recently weakened the power of the Foreign Secretary andthe FCO on overseas policy, so much so that the growing public backlash to ever greater integration has inpart stemmed from concern that the powers of the UK as a sovereign nation have been stretched so tight thatthey are in danger of breaking. There is legitimate public concern over the Lisbon Treaty’s potential to furthererode essential sovereign powers and the public demand for referenda as a restraining mechanism is bothunderstandable and correct.

19. There are gathering pressures within the EU for the European Council to take ever more decisions onEU foreign and security policy. The Council now meets regularly four times a year and has increasingly takento having ad hoc meetings, something that is likely to increase with the two new positions of a single Presidentof the Council, Herman Van Rompuy, for a renewable two and a half year term to a maximum of five yearsand the new powers for the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton now chairingall meetings of EU Foreign Ministers. These pressures are compounded by the frequency of visits to Londonby Heads of Government from all over the world. They expect to meet the Prime Minister. These pressures tofocus all decision making around one figure, the Prime Minister, needs to be resisted if one wishes to retain



Cabinet government and reject the presidential model. This is quite apart from the difficulty any one personhas in being able to involve oneself in so much of the detail that accompanies many of these issues. One ofthe ways that this pressure on the Prime Minister’s time can be reduced is if the Foreign Secretary adjusts theirtravel schedules to be more available in London and in Brussels. The days of leisurely travel around the worldare over if the Foreign Secretary wishes to exercise their role as the Cabinet’s principal adviser in developing,discussing and agreeing British policy overseas.

20. Finally, Question 8 relates to using the FCO to promote UK trade and economic recovery. There is apartperhaps from a new emphasis little that is original in this proposition. It was discussed and advocated bythe CPRS Report on our overseas representation published and in part implemented in 1977 when I wasForeign Secretary.

21. Firstly, a few words of caution. One of the lessons arising from the internal report I commissioned in1979 over the fall of the Shah, which is soon to be made public, was that we had focused too much attentionin the FCO on trade and economic activity in the Embassy in Teheran and that this had been done at theexpense of political reporting.

22. We also need to remember that there has been no more persistent an advocate of British entry into theeurozone within government than that of diplomats within the FCO often in open conflict with Treasuryofficials. There was little readiness within the diplomatic service generally to learn the detailed economiclessons from the structural problems in the design of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) and the reasonswhy the UK had to leave the ERM in 1992. It was also a tragedy that the very valuable contribution Britishdiplomats made to the negotiation of the intergovernmental pillars in the Maastricht Treaty by John Major gaveway to embracing the dismantling of most of this structure in the run up to the proposed Constitutional Treatyensuring that much of that valuable ground was never recovered in the subsequent negotiations over theLisbon Treaty.

23. It is easy for diplomats to claim that they only serve politicians and that it is the political leaders whoare responsible for all that has gone wrong. But this is too simplistic. The Diplomatic Service is given a specialrole in overseas policy, not wholly dissimilar to the special role of the Armed Services in the development ofdefence policy. The climate of opinion amongst officials within both the Diplomatic Service and the ArmedService can have a profound influence on the end result of Ministerial negotiations and decisions. The lastdecade has seen in the actual conduct of our foreign and security policy a quite shocking record ofincompetence at many levels. We will not begin to set this right if we focus only on Ministerial decisions anddo not attempt to correct, in the case of the Diplomatic Service, its overriding culture of wanting, not justacquiescing in, ever greater integration within the EU.

24. Without the commitment to a referendum, forced on the Conservative Party in large part by theReferendum Party, before the 1997 General Election, and reluctantly conceded in opposition by the LabourParty and Liberal Democrats, it is almost certain the UK would have entered into the eurozone during TonyBlair’s Prime Ministership and be now having to cope with a far deeper crisis than just our structural fiscaldeficit. It also has to be faced that the culture within which Foreign Office diplomats work has beeninsufficiently concerned about the exact wording of EU legislation. This has had a profoundly adverse effecton British life and business practice. Examples are the European health and safety legislation, the workingtime directive, and EU regulatory activity concerning the financial services industry. There are many otherexamples where too great a readiness to go along with the majority within the EU has had damagingconsequences on efficiency, unit costs and the competitiveness of British industry. There will have to be afundamental change within the FCO itself if diplomats are to carry much conviction in any enhanced role intrade promotion and economic recovery.

25. It is undoubtedly a good idea that UK Missions abroad should focus more on promoting UK trade andeconomic recovery but it is questionable how much this should become a specialized skill of diplomats. It isat least worth the Committee very seriously considering the alternative of more mixed Missions withrepresentatives from other departments in Whitehall serving overseas. They have, provided they can acquirethe language skills, the requisite specialized knowledge and can arguably make a greater contribution to thisnecessary reorientation. One of my personal regrets is that some of the aspects of the CPRS Report that wereagreed by Ministers in the Labour government were never fully implemented after we lost the election in 1979.While there have been some notable exceptions, there has not been the cross fertilization between the homeand overseas departments that was envisaged in terms of secondment both ways. Nor have we maintained ourglobal representation by cutting back to one person Missions supported by local staff. Such a singlerepresentative does not always have to be a diplomat; in some very poor countries a representative from DFIDmight be more appropriate and in other small islands for instance someone with a Treasury or a Ministry ofTrade background to deal with an offshore financial service industry might be more appropriate.

26. In the summer of 1977 the Labour Cabinet held an all-day meeting on the European Community, on thebasis of a detailed memorandum which I was asked by the Prime Minister to prepare personally. Under the 30year rule it should be available within the National Archives but it has not been placed there despite thedocument being referred to as the “Property of Her Majesty’s Britannic Government”. Perhaps this is becauseit was written to form the basis of a party political discussion as well as providing guidance for a distinctivepolicy over the EEC for the then government. For anyone interested I have forwarded a copy to the Clerk of



the Committee. There is an important section in it dealing with the enlargement of the Community from nineto twelve to include Portugal and Spain as well as continuing with the enlargement negotiations for Greece. Itwas argued that enlargement, in the section on Commitment to Confederation, would provide an antidote tofederalism and so it has, in the main, proved to be.

27. Today’s challenge for the UK is how to help restructure the eurozone. Many of us who have long arguedagainst British membership have nevertheless accepted that a euro currency within the EU was a legitimateobjective for other Member States and that we had no interest in damaging or destabilizing the euro. In thisregard it was reasonable for the Prime Minister, David Cameron, to assure other Member States that the Britishwould not stand in the way of sensible changes in the working practice and running of the eurozone, even ifthey involved Treaty amendment, with the essential proviso that they would have no consequential changes inpowers relating to the UK and the provisions for our opt-out of the eurozone. Such a clean separation will,however, be very difficult to achieve. For example, the Swedish position outside the eurozone is not reallycompatible with the existing Treaty language. There is also a strong case for the UK helping to establish thatMember States not in the eurozone are part of a settled structure within the EU and not in some anti-chamberwaiting for inevitable entry to the eurozone. It is, for example, very apparent that as a result of the presentdifficulties of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain and even Italy, there will be a far greater reluctance ofeurozone countries to enlarge membership than existed hitherto. Therefore the non eurozone part of the EUneeds to have a less transient nature with each country free to make their own mind up as to whether theywish to join the eurozone and entry not to be assumed to be automatic if they fulfill specific criteria. The UKcoalition government, in this context, is right to take special measures to help Ireland as it faces its economicdifficulties within the eurozone, particularly since we have a common border, history and a great manyeconomic links.

28. What this crisis within the eurozone has revealed are structural problems that may yet still require somecountries to leave the eurozone and for a period, at least, have the freedom to fix their own exchange andinterest rates. We are facing growing demands within G20 and from countries dependent on commoditiescurrently linked to the dollar, for consideration of a basket of currencies. The non eurozone part of the EUmay consider it worthwhile examining some of the detailed discussions about a hard Economic Currency Unit(ECU) along with other innovative ideas being discussed in the wake of the 2007 global financial crisis. Thereare dangers in the UK adopting a totally hands-off attitude to the changes and rebalancing that is starting toemerge as a result of the continuing crisis in the eurozone. We are proving day by day that we are not hostileto the eurozone itself but that we will not become a member. How the non eurozone operates is a matter offundamental interest to the UK and the smooth working between the eurozone and the non eurozone withinthe EU is in the interests of all Member States.

18 November 2010

Written evidence from Professor Daryl Copeland, University of Toronto

Summary— The FCO should serve as the UK government’s central agency for the analysis, coordination and

management of all aspects of globalization.

— The FCO’s knowledge of, and connection to people and places in the world represents its corevalue proposition as an instrument of international policy, as well the basis of its comparativeadvantage in relation to other government departments.

— The availability of adequate resources represents the sine qua non for FCO effectiveness; brilliantmanagement, strict economies and working smarter are necessary, but at the end of the day cannotsubstitute for budgetary sufficiency.

About the Submitter

Daryl Copeland is an analyst, author and educator specializing in diplomacy, international policy, globalissues and public management. He has written over 50 articles for the scholarly and popular press, and his firstbook, Guerrilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations, was released in July 2009 by Lynne RiennerPublishers. That volume features a chapter on the reform of foreign ministries (pp. 143–60).

Mr Copeland grew up in downtown Toronto, and received his formal education at the University of WesternOntario (Gold Medal, Political Science; Chancellor’s Prize, Social Sciences) and the Norman Paterson Schoolof International Affairs (Canada Council Special MA Scholarship). He has spent years backpacking on sixcontinents, and enjoys travel, photography, arts and the outdoors. Mr Copeland serves as a peer reviewer forCanadian Foreign Policy, the International Journal, and The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, and is a memberof the Editorial Board of the journal Place Branding and Public Diplomacy.

From 1981 to 2009 Mr Copeland served as a Canadian diplomat with postings in Thailand, Ethiopia, NewZealand and Malaysia. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was elected five times to the Executive Committee ofthe Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers. From 1996–99 he was National Program Director ofthe Canadian Institute of International Affairs in Toronto and Editor of Behind the Headlines, Canada’s



international affairs magazine. In 2000, he received the Canadian Foreign Service Officer Award for his “tirelessdedication and unyielding commitment to advancing the interests of the diplomatic profession”.

Among his positions at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) in Ottawa, MrCopeland has worked as Senior Intelligence Analyst, South and Southeast Asia; Deputy Director forInternational Communications; Director for Southeast Asia; Senior Advisor, Public Diplomacy; Director ofStrategic Communications Services; and, Senior Advisor, Strategic Policy and Planning.

Mr Copeland is Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of GlobalAffairs, where he has designed and delivers a graduate seminar on Science, Technology, Diplomacy andInternational Policy. In 2009 he was appointed as a Research Fellow at the University of Southern California’sCenter on Public Diplomacy.

Background and Introduction

1. In today’s highly conflicted world, diplomacy and foreign ministries matter more than ever, but if theyare underperforming and face a crisis of relevance and effectiveness. Diplomacy, and its institutions andpractices, have not adapted well to the challenges of globalization. A host of substantial problems have beenexacerbated by a negative image. Diplomats? To the extent that they are thought of at all, they are seen typicallyas dithering dandies lost hopelessly in a haze of obsolescence somewhere between protocol and alcohol.

2. For these reasons and more, in recent years diplomacy has been ignored, if not scorned by journalists,think tanks, international relations scholars and, most surprisingly, by governments. That neglect, however, hasproven costly, as international policy has become increasingly militarized and as many states have come torely on armed force as the international policy instrument of choice. The results—in Iraq, Afghanistan, andelsewhere—have been calamitous, while the exploration of alternative ways forward, including the expansionof trade, investment and technology transfer, have not received the attention they deserve.

3. Diplomacy’s problems can be remedied, but the necessary transformation will require a fundamentalrethinking of some key elements of international relations, in particular the notions of “security”—which is nota martial art—and “development”—which is not to be confused with aid. Most of all, the entire diplomaticecosystem, which consists of the foreign ministry, the foreign service, as well as the diplomatic business model,requires reconstruction from the ground up.

4. Diplomacy, the foreign ministry, and the foreign service are more, respectively, than the animus, themachinery, and the face of a nation to the world. All are closely related, and in fact, interdependent—a changein any one of the constituent parts will have knock-on effects elsewhere. The ecology of diplomacy representsan interlocking, organic whole, the matrix of international policy, the place where new ideas live or—too oftenand frequently for the wrong reasons—die. Like so many other ecosystems, this one too is beset by a cascadeof adversity.

5. Hammered by relentlessly diminishing resources, diplomacy and its supporting institutions are goingthrough a rough patch most everywhere. The initiative in international policy development has passed to otheractors, mainly defence departments, central agencies, NGOs and the private sector. Power and influence havemoved upwards, to supranational institutions, outwards, to civil society actors, and downwards, to other levelsof government. Leadership in foreign ministries has waned and creative international policy analysis and advicehave in recent years given way to a reactive posture that responds mainly, and not especially well, to externaldemands. Grand strategy, a critical pre-requisite for successful navigation aboard the ship of state, is notablefor its absence.

6. How, then, to bring diplomacy from the margins back into the mainstream, to get from fighting to talking,from diktat to dialogue and from coercion and compulsion to negotiation and compromise? In two words,not easily.

7. Foreign ministries, and the conventional diplomatic business model which they embody, have not adaptedwell to the challenges of the globalization era. They are rigid rather than fluid, hierarchic rather than networked,authoritarian rather than innovative, and staffed for the most part by a cadre of employees whose skill sets nolonger fill the bill. Amongst the oldest agencies of government, the bureaucratic culture within foreignministries tends to be change-resistant and risk-averse. Too thin on the ground at home, and even more severelystretched abroad, an under-financed diplomatic corps today finds itself in large part without the necessary toolsor capacity required to respond to the rapidly changing environment in which it operates. The crisis is epidemicand systemic.

8. In this age of uncertainty, formal state-to-state relations are still necessary, but they are no longer sufficientto obtain the kinds of international policy outcomes required. If foreign ministries are to be effective, they can,and in fact must connect directly with foreign publics—through the new as well as the conventional media, byopening storefront and temporary operations, by negotiating joint ventures with civil society… whatever works.The days of near universal reliance upon standard operating procedures and diplomatic convention have passed.

9. Diplomacy may still begin and end with interstate relations, but the effective exercise of influence isrelated increasingly to forging partnerships, managing networks and shaping opinions. Few foreign policyobjectives can now be achieved without carefully crafted initiatives designed to engage, to understand, to



advocate and to influence. Whether a country needs to build international coalitions, cooperate to protect theecosphere, or compete to attract foreign investment, skilled workers and students, the cultivation of a broadand diverse cross-section of civic support has become essential to success.

10. For these reasons and more, foreign ministries most everywhere are concluding that the doctrine andpractice of public diplomacy seems best suited to meeting the challenges inherent in the era of globalization.How, then, should today’s diplomats be spending their time? Building project-based networks, bothconventional and virtual, negotiating mutual interest alliances with the like-minded, working on media strategy,leveraging private sector activity… In sum, using attraction rather than coercion and exercising influencethrough dialogue and relationship-building.

11. In the early 21st century, the emerging world system is looking increasingly heterpolar, which is to saythat competing states or groups of states derive their relative power and influence from dissimilar sources—social, economic, political, military, cultural. Unlike the multipolar world of, for instance, 19th century Europe,the disparate vectors which empower these heterogeneous poles are difficult to compare or measure. Stabilitywill therefore depend largely upon the diplomatic functions of knowledge-driven problem solving and complexbalancing. Participation in those sorts of meaningful exchange holds forth the promise of effecting behaviourat both ends of the conversation, and therein lies the key to diplomacy’s enduring utility and appeal.

12. Diplomacy, then, is our best hope, but if it is to be in a position to deliver, then foreign ministries willneed first to be fixed. While better placed than most, the FCO nonetheless exemplifies many of the patternsand problems sketched above.

Key Questions and Issues

13. What is the FCO’s role in UK Government? Given the policy framework established by the new NationalSecurity Strategy, the creation of the National Security Council and the 2010 Strategic Defence and SecurityReview, what should the FCO’s role now be, and how should the Department relate to other parts ofGovernment?

14. The FCO should serve as the UK government’s central agency for the analysis, coordination andmanagement of all aspects of globalization. The FCO’s knowledge of, and connection to people and place inthe world represents its core value proposition as an instrument of international policy, as well as the basis ofits comparative advantage in relation to other government departments. The availability of adequate resourcesrepresents the sine qua non for FCO effectiveness; brilliant management, strict economies and working smarterare necessary, but at the end of the day cannot substitute for budgetary sufficiency.

15. How should the Foreign Secretary’s claim to be putting the FCO “back where it belongs at the centre ofGovernment” be assessed?

16. In practice, repositioning the FCO closer to the centre of government operations will involve a dedicationand commitment to intellectual leadership and policy entrepreneurship, and the development of a new narrativefor the organization as an international policy catalyst, broker, guide and storyteller. It will entail a muchgreater emphasis on forward planning and the analysis of broad, crosscutting policy clusters such asgovernance, sustainable development, the rule of law, and the promotion of rights and democracy, andcoordinating and integrating these issues across government. Also crucial will be rebuilding the depth andstrength of the FCO’s eroded and undervalued geographic expertise, which has suffered over time as a resultof various cost-cutting exercises and re-organizations. Acquisition of this unique form of knowledge—of peopleand place, of history, language and culture—is a major benefit conferred upon the FCO by virtue of itsmissions abroad.

17. What should be the role of the FCO’s network of overseas posts?

18. The FCO’s over-arching understanding of, and connection to the world, arising from and manifestthrough its network of missions abroad and geographic divisions at headquarters, represents its ace in the hole.Nowhere else in government do we find the capacity to develop a strategic overview of the UK’s place anddirection in the world, to examine first-hand the many facets of globalization, and to assess what they mightmean for the UK and its citizens. Diplomatic posts are crucial in this respect—neither journalists, norbusinesspeople, nor academics have the mandate or the ability to come to terms with a changing world throughthe unique prism of British values, policies and interests. This assumes, however, that those assigned abroadare actually doing diplomacy—swimming like fish in the sea of the people and not flopping around like a fishout of water, or sitting around inside the chancery talking to like-minded others about what might be going onoutside. Diplomats should not be reduced to international policy bureaucrats. If that is to be avoided, much oftheir time must be spent away from their desks, making contacts, developing networks, and engaging indialogue—not just with the usual suspects, but with strange bedfellows as well. Maintaining a broad range ofinterlocutors is essential for both representational and intelligence-gathering purposes.



19. What is the FCO’s role in explaining UK foreign policy to the British public?

20. The effective conduct of international policy outreach at home is the domestic equivalent of conductingpublic diplomacy (PD) abroad, and as such should be regarded as an essential element of the FCO’sresponsibilities. The outreach function, however, is frequently overlooked—diplomats are notorious for havingtheir faces to the world but their backs to their own citizens. Moreover, foreign ministries are typically withoutthe domestic constituencies more easily developed by government departments with large national programs—especially those involving significant local expenditure. In the case of both PD and outreach, the effective useof new and social media which leverage the interactive qualities of the internet will be elemental. The FCOhas to date made some significant strides in this respect (FCO bloggers, and the corporate use of Facebook,Twitter, YouTube and so forth).

21. What should be the FCO’s role in relation to non-governmental organisations?

22. The FCO should be the government’s key point of contact for NGOs with interests and activities relatedto international policy. Effectiveness can be leveraged through partnerships and joint ventures where sharedpriorities and objectives make that approach sensible. Mutual interest is the mother of the best collaboration.

23. Given the new Government’s emphasis on using the FCO to promote UK trade and economic recovery,how can the Department best avoid potential conflicts between this task, support for human rights, and thepursuit of other Government objectives?

24. At the highest level of analysis, international policy represents the expression, on the part of thoserepresenting states, of the constantly shifting balance between values, or that which is seen as important (suchas human rights, social justice or democratic development), and interests, or that which is sought (such asprosperity, through trade and investment; security, through development cooperation or peacekeeping; the ruleof law, through the promotion of good governance and international law). The two are often closely related—the way in which interests are pursued often reflects values, for instance in a preference for negotiation overconflict. Similarly, the extent to which values are considered in decision-making often reflects interests, forexample in the complex trade-offs between international environmental standards/stewardship and resourcedevelopment/use, or commercial relations and human rights. Because of the dynamic balance between valuesand interests in a constantly changing world, foreign policy is vexingly difficult to codify and completecoherence is unusual. Indeed, one of the mature pleasures of adulthood—and they are few—involves learningto live with paradox, ambiguity and unresolved issues. That said, it is the responsibility of foreign ministriesto manage the trade-offs (the broker function) and to communicate and implement the results.

25. The Committee would welcome submissions which address, in particular, the FCO’s relationships with theDepartment for International Development, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office (including theNational Security Council); the role of the security services in relation to the FCO; and the FCO’s role in themanagement and implementation of EU business for the UK Government.

26. In Guerrilla Diplomacy I argue that in the age of globalization, development has become the flip side ofsecurity, and accordingly diplomacy should replace defence at the centre of international policy. In the 21stcentury, the most profound challenges to human survival—climate change, public health, food insecurity,and resource scarcity, to name a few—are rooted in science and driven by technology (S&T). Moreover,underdevelopment and insecurity, far more than religious extremism or political violence, representfundamental threats to world order. In that context, the capacity to generate, absorb and use S&T could play acrucial role in improving security and development prospects. By way of comparison, the continuing pursuitof the Global War on Terror—under whatever new name—tends to have the opposite effect. Internationalpolicy has become excessively militarized, yet the military is both too sharp and too dull an instrument to dealwith the problems of globalization. Simply put, you can’t call in an air strike on a warming planet, or garrisonagainst pandemic disease, or send out an expeditionary force to occupy the alternatives to a carbon economy.Bombs and guns, generals and admirals, and a reliance upon armed force can’t provide for either security ordevelopment in the face of complex transnational issues.

27. From this line of argument it follows that long-term, sustainable, equitable and human-centreddevelopment—addressing the needs of the poor, and bridging the digital divide—advances the cause of security,and accordingly should become a pre-occupation of diplomacy in general, and of science diplomacy inparticular. The FCO’s Science and Innovation Network represents an important start in responding to thisobservation, but much more needs to be done to equip British representatives with the S&T skills andexperience required.

28. A word is also necessary about a frequently misunderstood term, intelligence, particularly in referenceto the FCO’s relationship to the security services. Intelligence is simply information whose value is based onits accuracy, timeliness and relevance in relation to the objectives, priorities and interests of the informationconsumer—in this case, HMG. While intelligence may be generated through covert or secret means(espionage), it has been my experience that the most worthwhile and accurate assessments are based usuallyupon oral exchanges, first hand observation and the careful reading of open, unclassified sources. With thedeclining importance of formal, state to state relations in the overall international relations mix, diplomacy isincreasingly about establishing networks of contacts for the express purpose of collecting information of tactical



and strategic importance to governments, which is to say, intelligence. This will be increasingly so as the FCOmoves towards implementing a model of public diplomacy which features lobbying, advocacy, and, especially,dialogue, which is the source of what is referred to in the trade as human intelligence. In these respects, andresulting from its extensive network of missions and representatives abroad and system of secure desktopcommunications, the FCO is well-positioned to increase substantially its contribution to the collectiveintelligence gathering effort. That, in turn, would bolster the UK’s position in other major allied capitals, wherebringing more to the table will almost always produce tangible dividends.

29. To create a foreign ministry that is relevant and effective, new forms of representation abroad, and aheadquarters establishment that is flatter, more agile and responsive, and not least, more influential andpowerful, are the order of the day. An FCO that is more attuned and relevant to the work of other departmentsof government, and to the preoccupations of Britons would be positioned to lead on major international issuesacross government instead of scrambling incessantly, chasing a receding horizon, and fighting often ill-fated,rearguard actions to defend turf best left to others. Line departments may well have a better capacity to managespecific international policy files, such as diminishing biodiversity or international finance and monetary issues,but the management of the broad threats and challenges arising from globalization is no one else’s job.

30. On the more practical side, and this cannot be overemphasized, the FCO is at risk of becoming adepartment of service dispensers, spending more time and money providing housing, administration,technological support, and office space—often for the representatives of other government departments—thanpursuing core international policy objectives. However necessary, this is not sufficient if the FCO is to avoidbecoming a giant administrative tail wagging a tiny, emaciated international policy dog barely capable ofbarking.

31. Translated into action, this will mean reconstructing a foreign ministry that can interpret, articulate,integrate, and advocate by assessing what the changing world means for the UK. In this dispensation, the FCObecomes an international policy catalyst (across government), a global guide (for Britons) and an accomplishedstoryteller (to the world). To do this, it will be necessary to maximize assets in the field, to connect with widernetworks, to renew professional skills, and to strengthen policy capacity.

32. Finally it may be asked: if HMG moves to create a foreign ministry dedicated to harmonizing the UK’sinternational policy and interests, to acting as a focal point and broker for global issues and world affairs, toclient service (trade, consular, passports) and to managing the overseas platform (the network of missionsabroad), will this be enough? While reconsideration and reform are clearly required, neither can improveperformance and produce results in the absence of adequate resources. A fundamental re-thinking of the FCO’sorganizational design and business model must therefore be wed to the promise of re-investment, as thealternative is continued drift into low-end logistical support, and, eventually, increased ineffectiveness andirrelevance.

23 November 2010

Written evidence from Dr Graeme Davies, School of Politics and International Studies, University of

Leeds, and Dr Robert Johns, Department of Government, University of Essex

BRITISH PUBLIC ATTITUDES ABOUT INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS7

Summary

1. The evidence from this memorandum comes from Foreign Policy Attitudes and Support for War Amongstthe British Public, an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project (Award Ref.062–23–1952). The data were collected in early 2010 on a representative sample of 5,000 British adults.Respondents were questioned about their attitudes towards international affairs, the use of military force,perceived security threats, nuclear weapons, MI6 and international trust amongst others. The purpose of thisevidence is to give the committee members an indication of the public opinion parameters within which theFCO will have to operate. This memorandum reports a selection of our results.

2. Some of our main findings are:

— The British public are supportive of an ethical foreign policy, largely eschewing the use of torture,supporting strict controls on the arms trade, and preferring negotiation to the use of military action.

— Only 3% of the British public rank defence and foreign affairs as their most important policypriority compared to 57% who placed the economy first.

— 51% of the British public tend not to trust other nations.

— 57% of the British public declare themselves to be interested in international affairs.

— 48% of the British public are confident that MI6 produces accurate intelligence; only 17% areconfident that the British government will present this information accurately to the public.

— 61% of the British public rank international terrorism as a critical threat to British security.

— 41% rank proliferation of nuclear weapons as a critical threat to national security.7 More material is available on request.



— 54% agree with the statement that “Britain is too small a country to be out policing the world”.

— 49% of the British public believe that negotiations are an effective approach for dealing with acountry whereas 18% believe that military action is more effective.

— 46% of the public believe torture can never be justified.

3. Our evidence suggests public feelings about Britain’s role in the world are confused—or, at least, heavilycontextual—with some responses suggesting that the public believe we should be less active, whereas otherresponses suggesting a desire for greater engagement. While respondents profess themselves interested ininternational affairs, it did not rank very highly as a policy priority for the public. When we do engage ininternational affairs we should do so in conjunction with other states. However, the public believes that the UKspends too many resources supporting US military activities and that we contribute too much to internationalorganisations. The public is also generally mistrustful of other states in the international system.

4. The evidence presented will examine British public attitudes in eight areas:

(a) International affairs.

(b) Negotiations and sanctions.

(c) Security threats.

(d) International aid.

(e) International trade.

(f) National debt and military action.

(g) Confidence in intelligence and government.

(h) Nuclear weapons.

The Authors

5. Dr. Graeme Davies: Lecturer in International Security at the University of Leeds and Co-Director ofProject. Dr Davies has published research on domestic politics and the initiation of international conflicts,North Korean foreign policy behaviour and the effect of coercive diplomacy on Iran. He is currently workingon British and US public attitudes towards international conflict and international affairs.

6. Dr. Robert Johns: Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Essex and Co-Director of Project. DrJohns researches and has published in the fields of public opinion and political psychology. He has been leadresearcher on a number of major survey projects investigating political attitudes in Britain.

Attitudes Towards International Affairs

7. The public in general regard themselves as interested in international relations, with 59% of respondentssaying that they pay attention to international politics. However, only 3% of the public rank defence and foreignaffairs as their most important policy priority. When considering Britain’s role in the world, the British publicshow a strong preference for multilateral efforts and tend to want the British to avoid policing the internationalsystem. Looking at Figure 1 we see that 78% of the British public agree or agree strongly that the UK shouldwork with other countries in solving problems like climate change and poverty. However, 20% of the publicagree strongly that we are too small a country to be out policing the world and only 8% agree strongly thatwe should be trying to end conflicts around the world. Generally the public appear to be roughly equally spliton “internationalism versus isolationism” with 38% of the public believing that we should concentrate onproblems at home, 41% disagreeing, and 22% unsure. This is characteristic of a broader ambivalence inBritish public attitudes towards international affairs. In particular, our findings suggest that there is considerableuncertainty about active engagement in military matters, but the public do want to see us cooperate with otherstates on non-military matters. As with so many findings in this survey, this is clearly reflective of Britain’srecent foreign policy experience.



Figure 1

Public Attitudes about Britain’s Role

Agree Strongly Agree Neither Disagree Disagree Strongly

Concentrate on Britain Active solving Conflicts

Work with other nations Too small to police World

148

37

2024

3541

34

22

32

15

24

32

20

6

19

95

2 3

8. In terms of military alliances the public are particularly unwilling for the British to become involved inunilateral action or “coalition of the willing”-style actions with the United States (Figure 2). 70% of the publicare willing to support British involvement in UN-led operations and 45% of the public are willing to supportEU-led operations. 30% of the public are willing to support British involvement in US-led coalitions,marginally lower than the 32% who are willing to support unilateral military action. Clearly, if Britain is to actabroad then the public would prefer that we worked with other nations; if we are to go to war, they feel thatwe should act within formal international organisations, preferably the UN.

UN Mission NATO Mission EU Mission US Led Coalition Alone

Yes No

70

30

65

3545

55

30

70

32

68

Figure 2

Would you support British military action in the following

circumstances?

Attitudes Towards International Negotiations and Economic Sanctions

9. One of the areas addressed in the survey is attitudes towards international negotiations, a matter directlyunder the FCO’s remit. While the public are generally mistrustful of other countries in the international system,this does not translate into opposition to negotiations and the public is clearly in favour of negotiating withIran, North Korea and the Taliban. Looking at Figure 3, we see the public are very supportive of diplomaticattempts to deal with states that have or might be developing nuclear weapons. We also examined attitudestowards military strikes against Iran and found that the public is again in favour of a more diplomatic approach.There is slightly less willingness to support negotiations with the Taliban, although it still remains the preferredoption for a significant portion of the public. Overall, the public is inclined to regard negotiations as a moreeffective tool for foreign affairs than military action (Figure 4).



Definitely

Should Not Try

1 2 3 4 5 Definitely

Should Try

Negotiate With North Korea Negotiate With Taliban Negotiate with Iran

410

3 3 72

6 8 3

14 16 121717 16 17

1116

3930

48

Figure 3

Public Perceptions on Negotiation

812

39

28

12

4 2

1 2 3 4 5Negotiations

more effective

Military action

more effective

Figure 4

Which is more effective: military action or diplomacy?

10. Respondents were on balance likely to see economic sanctions as effective (Figure 5). Confirming thedovish tendency among the British public, sanctions were, like diplomacy, seen as preferable to military actionin dealing with countries perceived to be a problem for the United Kingdom.

Sanctions

46

16

23

30

11

3

1 2 3 4 5 Very EffectiveNot at all

effective

Figure 5

Sanctions

Security Threats

11. The British public clearly perceive the rise of Islamic extremism and the spread of international terrorismas posing the greatest threat to British national security, trumping even the spread of nuclear weapons (Figure6). The rise of international terrorism has had a significant impact upon the British public with 73% believingthat Britain will be the target of terrorist attacks in the next few years and 27% of respondents believing thatthey might be the victim of such an attack (the latter probably an undue pessimism considering the historicalrecord of terror attacks). Interestingly, the rise of China is viewed by the British public as an important if notcritical security threat. These attitudes are clearly subject to the influence of the media and political debate



more generally, and public perceptions of national security priorities may well reflect the focus in publicdiscourse on terror rather than on, say, energy security.

Spread o

f Dise

ase

Disr

uption o

f Energ

y Supply

Inte

rnatio

nal Terro

rism

Nuclear P

rolif

eratio

n

Islam

ic E

xtrem

ism

Imm

igra

tion

Climate

Change

The rise

of C

hina

Global f

inanci

al cris

is

Critical Threat Important Threat Not a threat

13

68

19

47 49

5

61

34

5

4150

9

61

34

5

54

32

14

26

52

2214

63

23

35

59

6

Figure 6

Threats to British National Security

Aid Policy

12. There seems to be a general if slightly grudging acceptance of foreign aid, with half the populationbelieving that the aid budget is either about right (30%) or too small (21%) (Figure 7). A further 9% answered“don’t know”, leaving a large minority (40%) who believe that we spend too much. There is roughly an evensplit on how the British public view foreign aid priorities (Figure 8), with around 39% of the populationbelieving that we should focus our aid policy on national interests and 42% believing we should focus on theneed of the developing countries.

Far too little The Right Amount Far too much

Amount of Aid

4 5

12

30

1310

17

Figure 7

Public Perceptions about Aid



1 2 3 4 5

17

9

1620

14

9

16

Aid distribution priority

According to

Need

According to

our national

interests

Figure 8

Aid distribution priority

Trade Policy

13. The next area we focus upon is the extent of protectionist attitudes amongst the British public, and inparticular on their attitudes towards the arms trade. Generally the public opposes both unbridled protectionismand completely free trade; rather they are supportive of limited restrictions upon imports (Figure 9). (This flockto the middle option may also reflect a public that knows and thinks little about the subject.) There is similarbalance on the issue of arms exporting, but here there is a core of strong opposition, with 14% stronglydisapproving of the arms trade (Figure 10). The support of the rest of the public comes with conditions,however, relating to where the public believes those arms are going. A separate question revealed that, while21% flatly oppose any arms exports and 11% take an entirely permissive approach, the large majority of thepublic believe that we should only sell arms to democracies and countries with a good human rights record(Figure 11). Arms deals with countries that have poor human rights records would clearly go against publicopinion.

Tight restrictions 1 2 3 4 5 No restrictions

7 6

19

31

18

9 10

Figure 9

Restrictions on Foreign Imports



1 2 3 4 5 Strongly

Approve

Strongly

Disapprove

14

9

19

28

16

86

Approval

Figure 10

UK Arms Trade

Export to anyone Export to democracies and countries with good human rights records No exports

11

69

21

Figure 11

Where should we export arms?

National Debt and Military Action

14. Looking at Figure 6, we can see that 94% of the British public view the financial crisis as an importantor critical threat to British security. One of the implications of the financial crisis is the size of the deficit andthe overall level of national debt. We examined public views about whether it should affect governmentdecision-making about the use of military action. Clearly, the deployment of armed forces is a costly businessand financial restrictions may affect national priorities. A small majority of the British public (54%) believethat the level of national debt should not influence military decisions. However, a significant minority (36%)believe we should rule out any new military endeavours until the debt has been reduced substantially and 11%of the public believe that we should suspend all military actions until the national debt has been significantlyreduced.

Suspend all military activities until

debt is substantially reduced

Rule out any new activities until

debt is substantially reduced

Debt should not influence military

decisions

11

36

54

Figure 12

Military Action and National Debt



Confidence in Intelligence and the Government

15. One of the clearest findings we have in our study is that, while the British public are broadly confidentin the intelligence produced by MI6 (48% to the “confident” side of the middle point), they are far lessconfident that the British government will present that intelligence accurately (only 18%) (Figure 13). Theflawed use of intelligence during the build up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 has clearly influenced publicattitudes about how government uses intelligence. Further analysis suggests that an individual’s confidence inintelligence and government reporting of that intelligence will have a significant impact upon their support forpre-emptive military action. This will have significant implications for British foreign policy if future decisionsare based on—or at least publicly justified using—intelligence.

1 2 3 4 5 Very ConfidentNot at all

confident

MI6 Accuracy Government Accuracy

6

27

5

15 1620

2520

29

1115

5 42

Figure 13

Confidence in Intelligence Accuracy and Government Reporting of

Intelligence

16. We also examined public attitudes towards the use of coercive questioning methods. Most within thepublic show a strong distaste for the use of torture and enhanced interrogation techniques (such as water-boarding), 46% of the public believing that torture and 34% that enhanced interrogation can never be justified(Figure 14). On the other hand, there remain significant minorities who are much more sanguine about suchmethods.

1 2 3 4 5

Torture Enhanced Interrogation

Definitely

cannot be

justified

Definitely can

be justified

46

34

19 1710

15 11 137 11

3 5 4 7

Figure 14

Public Attitudes towards Information Extraction

Nuclear Weapons and the NPT

17. The next area that we investigated was public attitudes towards nuclear weapons, their costs, and ourobligations towards the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We asked the public if they believed that we spent too much,too little or just the right amount on our nuclear deterrent (Figure 15). While the largest minority of the publicfelt that we spent about the right amount on our nuclear deterrent (32%) a sizeable proportion of the public(38% to that side of the mid-point) tend to think that too much money is spent. When asked about Britain’sobligations to disarm under the NPT, respondents showed general support for the removal of nuclear weaponsbut little enthusiasm for leading the way on that front. A majority of the public (52%) believe that we shoulddisarm at the same pace as the other nuclear powers and few were in the extreme categories: just 9% of thepublic believe we should retain the deterrent regardless of the actions of other states, and still fewer wereunilateralists—just 5% favoured immediate disarmament.



Far too little 1 2 The right 4 5 Far too muchamount

3 27

32

129

17

Figure 15

Expenditure on Maintaining Nuclear Deterrent

Keep Nuclear

Weapons

Get rid of nuclear

waepons last

Get rid of nuclear

weapons at the same

pace as other

countries

Start the process of

getting rid of its

nuclear weapons

Immediately get rid of

all nuclear weapons

917

52

17

5

Figure 16

Public Attitudes Towards NPT Obligations

Conclusions

18. The picture emerging from this research is of a broadly multilateral public. Their focus is generally oninternational cooperation within formal institutional frameworks. They are concerned about ad hoc militarycampaigns and believe that we should neither be acting in unilateral fashion nor attempting to police theinternational system. The public support nuclear disarmament but again they want the government to act inconjunction with the other states.

19. This desire for multilateral action is also consistent with the wider demands for an ethical foreign policy.The public eschews the use of torture, is broadly supportive of international aid (even at a time of domesticeconomic difficulty), and, while not opposed to the arms trade, wants strict controls on where British weaponsare sold. An ethical foreign policy at the heart of government will receive strong support from the British public.

20. There is a general confidence in the intelligence that is produced by MI6, but an uncertainty about howthat intelligence will be used by the government. This has immediate policy implications: an independentagency that is free from political control and can produce publicly available intelligence dossiers may benecessary to improve British public confidence in evidence presented for military action. It also has implicationsfor the nature of public opinion about foreign policy, a topic often remote from people’s everyday concerns(and often given little prominence in the mass media). While the public reported considerable interest ininternational affairs, the apparently moderate positions taken on most issues may reflect the top-of-the-headresponses from citizens who have seldom reflected on that question before and grasp at what sounds like areasonable response. Attitudes tend to crystallise when previously remote issues are thrust into their attention,as with the Iraq war and accompanying controversies about intelligence. Public opinion in this field thus offerspolicymakers a degree of room for manoeuvre. However, there is a point beyond which the “permissiveconsensus” will break.

25 November 2010



Written evidence from Sir Edward Clay KCMG

About the WriterI was a diplomat from 1968–2005. I served as High Commissioner in Kenya (2001–05), Cyprus(1999–2001) and Uganda (1993–97, during which period I was for a time accredited on a non-residentbasis to Rwanda and Burundi); between 1997–99 I was the Director of Public Services in the FCO,responsible for consular, visa, information and news, cultural and parliamentary work, and for managingthe FCO’s relationships with the British Council, BBC World Service and the Wilton Park ConferenceCentre.

I otherwise spent my overseas career in Eastern and Southern Europe (twice in Cyprus), and EasternAfrica (including twice in Kenya). In London, I spent most time on issues of defence and internationalsecurity, and human resources.

I am particularly interested in development issues, and their relationship to governance. I became knownin Kenya in particular for speaking out on human rights, constitutional reform and corruption. I wasdeclared (as I remain) PNG8 in that country three years after I retired, soon after the violent end to thedisputed presidential election of late 2007.

Since I retired, I have served as a trustee or committee member of a number of NGOs, all with adevelopment aspect. I am an associate director of the Centre for Political and Diplomatic Studies.

Note: what follows has not been cleared with the FCO. My last encounter with the Foreign Affairs Committeeconcerned my argument with the FCO about their attempt to constrain tightly what retired diplomats could say.I was grateful for the FAC’s support for the case I made for relaxation of the offending Rule. The regulationconcerned, DSR 5, had been tightened indefensibly at Mr Straw’s behest in 2006. It was finally relaxed in2009. I attach for ease of reference at the end of the following submission my letter of thanks to the Chairmanof 16 March 2009.9

The Role of the FCO in UK Government

Main points:

— Government needs a foreign policy co-ordinator within Whitehall.

— The role and standing of that co-ordinating department, and its Secretary of State, should beappropriate to the role and standing HMG seeks in the world.

— The department must be resourced so that it can take an authoritative, independent and intelligentpart in inter-departmental discussions of issues on which other departments enjoy a recognisedlead, and with parliamentary groups, NGOs, media and think-tanks which have importantperspectives of their own.

— Its essential expertise lies in its ability to influence, argue, negotiate, and to report, interpret andadvise upon how international developments bear on British interests, and vice-versa.

— Its authority rests upon recognition abroad, in Whitehall and at Westminster, of the foreignministry’s primacy in the United Kingdom on foreign affairs.

— Reflections on possible conflicts of interest.

1.1 The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)—or any alternative ministry responsible for internationalpolicy—needs such standing and authority in Whitehall as is needed to serve successfully British society andits governments. The Office cannot for long make up for weaknesses in British society or within Britishgovernments. The question is, not of boxing above our weight but how to box most effectively at our weight:foreign governments will scrutinise our country for its health, and our system of government for evidence thatinternational affairs are no longer dealt with as seriously as they need to be. If our foreign ministry and itsservants want to be effective and taken seriously abroad, they and their ministers need to be taken seriously athome, and in Whitehall.

1.2 The FCO must be the principal means by which HMG plays its effective part in internationalorganisations to which we belong (the UN and its family; the European Union, including the new EuropeanExternal Action Service; NATO; the Commonwealth; the World Trade Organisation; the International FinancialInstitutions, and so on); the leader in influencing and persuading, negotiating treaties and understandings, andupholding those to which the UK is party; and fulfilling in relation to international institutions and othercountries our shared and bilateral obligations of all kinds, in partnership with other Whitehall departments.

1.3 The UK’s ambivalence about its European avocation has been a handicap to this country’s internationalstanding, security and foreign policy for much of the last thirty years. It has arguably made us less successfulin areas of our strength and emphasised (but sometimes disguised) our weaknesses. Our hostility towardsEurope has divided the FCO from much political opinion; it has not demonstrably made us more useful as apivot of Atlanticism, nor strengthened our effectiveness in NATO—arguably the opposite. Europe is one ofthose issues on which the consensus within the FCO for perhaps thirty years has been far from what wasfashionable, and may have helped lose it parliamentary and public respect and support in its continuous battles8 Persona non grata.9 Not published.



over resources. Another major issue of which the same can be said include Arab/Israel and Middle Easternpolicy more widely. In any case, our national interest and the drive for a more economic diplomacy should leadus to engage wholeheartedly in the EEAS and in the formulation of an effective European international policy.

2.1 Only one—and preferably just one—department is needed to bring together analysis of internationalissues, assessments of the interests of the United Kingdom and of pressures bearing upon those interests. Onedepartment is needed to focus HMG’s conduct of our international policy accordingly, in the light of inter-departmental views. That department must also engage with, harvest ideas from and gain the respect of themany non-governmental sources of expertise on international policy. International policy is not a preserve ofone department: many or perhaps most Whitehall departments have policies with international dimensions.

2.2 The new National Security Council (NSC) might not have been invented if the FCO had not lostimportant capabilities and suffered particularly debilitating attacks on its resources in the early part of the 21stcentury. The FCO should be re-skilled to do what it used to do very effectively in co-operation with theintelligence, security and defence authorities.

2.3 The NSC is an extra cost to government, a source of rivalry where we cannot afford it, and represents alarge intrusion of prime ministerial power into foreign policy: our postwar history of prime minister-drivenforeign policy is not encouraging, and it undermines the post and potential contribution of the Foreign andCommonwealth Secretary. We should not, at any rate, need two (or more) Whitehall departments runningforeign policy.

3.1 The FCO does not need to be greater—in size or budget or in any other sense—than other Whitehall ornon-governmental stakeholders in international policy. It does not need to compete with the expertises of other,lead departments. There are urgent reasons for the favour in terms of funding shown to the intelligence agenciesin recent years and their increasing public profile. Such phenomena are not the problem. The relationship withthe Ministry of Defence worked admirably for years despite the disparity of size and the MOD’s high profile.

3.2 What the FCO must do is recruit, retain and organise itself to remain a first-class policy department, inthe first place. Successive governments have demeaned its role (“the ministry for foreigners”) and blamed itfor failures, reduced its resources deliberately or negligently, and increasingly behaved as if service delivery isthe department’s only or chief function at the cost of policy formulation and implementation. Service deliveryis important, but it is not a substitute for a foreign policy.

3.3 The Prime Minister’s declaration that “ambassadors must be salesmen” is not a startling new departure:the security and prosperity of the UK have always been basic purposes of the diplomatic service. The questionin the present era of globalisation of promoting exports is more complicated than it was (what is a Britishcompany or a UK-branded good?), while promoting inward investment in the UK is perhaps the more importanttask. Since I did commercial work when it was passing through one of its periods in fashion thirty years ago,the number of commercial posts abroad has shrunk as it has taken a lowly place behind other priorities.Diplomats need the chance to get experience of commercial work in their youth, before they are called uponto do it as an ambassador. The purpose of a diplomatic career is to train people in key skills and give them achance to develop and practise them before they reach senior positions: the planning for a proper structure andcultivation of talent is something the FCO needs always to do, to realise full value from its investment inits people.

3.4 The establishment of the Department for International Development (DfID) with a mandate embodiedunder the International Development Assistance Act and a ring-fenced budget is a huge innovation in the UK’sinternational policy framework. DfID has sometimes behaved as an alternative, overseas representative ofHMG. The department’s institutional character as a spending agency is marred by its profligacy and weaknesson governance. Its flaws reduce the effectiveness of a large and otherwise well-conceived aid programme, andcut across efforts to make international policy coherent and cohesive.

3.5 DfID needs to shed its old resentments, stop avenging itself on the FCO for decades of co-habitation,re-join Whitehall and adapt itself to the collegiate formulation and execution of foreign policy in partnershipwith other stakeholders, under the leadership of the FCO. Ministers must show a lead on this. Some of its largebudget needs putting to purposes not usually regarded as aid. The argument that DfID’s big budget isinsignificant in terms of overall UK government expenditure, is false: the aid budget is about equivalent towhat we plan to spend on the Olympics or a bit more than the very hefty increase in funding steered by thelast government towards policing in the UK. DfID’s budget needs to respond to the wider objectives of HMGand to be assessed more rigorously, like other departments’ spending. The new Independent Committee on AidImpact may be useful, though whether its remit extends to recommendations to spend less or spend differentlyis doubtful. DfID money is badly needed for conflict prevention or resolution, and to fund a proper FCO,for example.

4.1 The FCO’s unique role and contribution within government is to assess the significance of developmentsbeyond the UK to British interests, and to report confidently and confidentially to London upon them. In doingso, they will need to draw upon the resources and interests of non-governmental organisations, the media, thinktanks and other important stakeholders and departments. They must have a more open dialogue on key foreignpolicy issues with parliament, through the FAC and all-party groups, under the supervision of their ministers.



4.2 The continuing ICT revolution and differences in the way countries do their business have arguablymade the collection of information easier, but the interpretation of its reliability and significance moredemanding. The FCO will continue to post most of its best people to its multilateral missions and functionaldesks in London to promote the UK’s role in the management of key international issues. The network ofbilateral missions has, however, an essential role in informing policy on those issues, and in its promotion anddelivery in other countries. For a member of the P5 with worldwide responsibilities, non-resident missions arenot an adequate substitute for resident missions in other states, flexibly and lightly managed, but capable ofrepresenting HMG’s interests properly, seeking to exert influence and interpreting foreign governments andcountries to HMG. Rwanda in 1994 is a reminder—and not the only one—of that.

4.3 Of course, the FCO will continue to need to hire and pull in expertise from other departments to helpdo this work of reporting, analysis, influencing and negotiation. The personnel should be systematically andappropriately selected elsewhere. But if work needs doing in support of our international policy, the budget ofthe FCO should provide for it to be done.

4.4 The pool of expertise may also include experts contracted from outside the public service altogether,including foreign citizens recruited in third countries. Such recruitment should not, however, prevent theacquisition of expertise and experience by career members of HM Diplomatic Service. Nor should liberties betaken with the requirements of discretion and trust which would compromise the delivery of confident andconfidential advice to the process of international policy-making.

5.1 The domestic utility of the FCO as a foreign ministry relies substantially upon three things: first, itsexpertise in international policy-making and diplomacy; second, wide acceptance of the weight within Cabinetand Parliament of its Secretary of State; third, the clear acceptance by foreign governments and heads ofinternational organisations of the unique authority of ambassadors and high commissioners to speak on behalfof HMG as a whole (which in turn will reflect their assessment of the weight the FCO and its ministers carrywithin government).

5.2 However good the FCO, its skill in promoting British interests depends primarily on the internationalreputation of the United Kingdom as an effective, economically successful and respected independent State,taking seriously its accepted obligations and aspirations to maintain and develop an international system basedupon rules and law.

5.3 Foreigners will not take seriously a country or a government which seems not to take foreign policyseriously, appears unreliable or uncertain, and undernourishes its foreign ministry.

6.1 I have not so far dilated on the question of possible conflicts raised in your inquiry’s terms of reference.I have left it and my reflections of my personal experience until last.

6.2 Diplomats may, as individuals, sometimes be torn between conscience and duty, and very occasionallydriven to question whether they can continue to do their public duty. Your terms of reference suggest theremight be a special conflict between supporting British exports and promoting human rights. Such was widelysupposed to be the Prime Minister’s dilemma during his recent visit to China.

6.3 In fact, in my experience, the conflict has arisen much more often when domestic actions by the Britishgovernment have belied the high moral tone we have taken over the denial of democratic freedoms and libertiesto citizens of other countries. Such conflicts arose during the Cold War when we wished to encourage freedomof movement or of expression among citizens of Warsaw Pact countries while applying a visa regime designedto prevent such movement; applying domestic restrictions on our rights during the troubles in Northern Irelandposed similar problems. In recent years, our response to international terrorism has resurrected those difficulties.British diplomats are prudent not to get too het up about the rights of others lest their presumed moral highground turns into a slipway or swamp and drops them in it at a crucial moment.

6.4 Your terms of reference ask whether conflicts would be caused as diplomats’ tried to follow the PrimeMinister’s injunction to promote trade. The cause of my disagreement with the FCO in 2006–07 concerned mypublic criticism of the then Prime Minister’s interference with the inquiries of the SFO into the business inSaudi Arabia of BAe Systems. I knew nothing of that company’s business, but I knew quite a lot about thelectures the British government had read over many years to the governments of countries like Kenya aboutthe Rule of Law, due process and anti-corruption. Mr Blair’s instruction undermined all that.

6.5 I was retired by then, and felt free to speak my mind about this hypocrisy. Our bad example would doa great disservice not just to our own institutions but to the efforts of brave people in badly governed countriesto get action against corruption. Whitehall did not agree, and DfID and No 10 demanded that the FCO act.They did. Corrupt governments took note. Kenya stopped its residual co-operation with the SFO and thelatter accordingly closed down its assistance in looking into the scams known collectively as Anglo-Leasingand Finance.

6.6 One dilemma your terms of reference should highlight is the diplomats’ twin responsibilities forpromoting British business and suppressing corruption. The new Bribery Act, whose enforcement has beendelayed by six months to allow for further consideration, makes corrupt behaviour abroad a crime, if it iscarried out by a British company or its representatives. British diplomats have to grass up such companies orindividuals if there is evidence of misbehaviour. Perhaps there will be no evidence and the Act may prove



otiose. Or, since Parliament saw fit to pass it, perhaps cases will arise. But companies operating in some venalenvironments may feel vulnerable, and diplomats may feel adrift when a foreign government decides fairly—or more likely, unfairly—to accuse a British company of misbehaving. Let’s hope both businessmen anddiplomats will have clear guidance on how to behave and how their roles differ.

6.7 Among the worst things a British diplomat can expect is to take a high profile on human rights orgovernance issues, only to be undermined by her or his government breaching our own standards. It is a formof British myopia or arrogance that thinks that what we do in our own country has no bearing on how we areperceived abroad. Oddly, modern communications mean that people in very poor countries—who have morecuriosity but can afford less ICT—often have a clearer idea about what makes our society tick than we—withmore means but less curiosity—have about theirs.

6.8 Whatever the justification may be, such blundering is a sure sign that domestic policy-makers at homehave ceased to think that the way we are seen abroad should influence our conduct at home. So that addsanother dimension to the question posed in your inquiry: how do we get the rest of Whitehall to empathisewith the FCO in its task of projecting British values, protecting and promoting British security and prosperityand the welfare of our citizens? EU membership has immeasurably improved domestic departments’ awarenessof the European dimension. But there is still the rest of the world to worry about. Throwing our weight aroundworks less and less: our ability to engage with others—meaning being ready sometimes to concede things—and persuade, influence and negotiate depends on our example, our resolve and our adherence to the rules ofinternational institutions we value, and to international law we domesticate as our own.

25 November 2010

Written evidence from Charles Crawford CMG

RESTORING TECHNIQUE

Summary

1. Amidst a swirling confusion of ever-changing targets, objectives and strategic priorities the FCO (alongwith Whitehall generally) has lost sight of the primacy of basic diplomatic technique.

2. The FCO needs to get back to two core value-adding principles:

(a) Understanding foreign governments and cultures.

(b) Being highly skilled in persuasion and negotiation.

3. To do that it needs the right tools and training for the job—far too much money made available byParliament for foreign policy work in the widest sense is being wasted, damaging these core functions.

4. This submission to the Foreign Affairs Committee focuses on the under-analysed but central subject ofDiplomatic Technique. Without technique it does not matter much how and where the UK diplomatic effort isorganised within Whitehall—the practical results in terms of impact overseas will be disappointing if notdamaging.

Charles Crawford CMG

5. There are two categories of diplomat:

(a) Those whose careers centre on devising the rules of global order, based mainly in London and in asmall number of key Embassies/Missions overseas (UKRep Brussels, UKMis New York, UKDelNATO, Washington, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing).

(b) Those who work on the ground in the great mass of other countries trying to implement those rules—who have to rely on their wits and skill to make an impact, often in physically/morally challenging(or even dangerous) situations.

6. I served in HM Diplomatic Service from 1979–2007 working very much in the latter category, with mostof my career spent overseas in difficult “transition” countries. First in communist Yugoslavia, apartheid SouthAfrica and Russia in the early Yeltsin years. Then three times as British Ambassador: in Sarajevo after theDayton Accords; in Belgrade following the fall of Slobodan Milosevic; and finally in Warsaw as Poland joinedthe European Union. I have much experience in what works, and why.

7. In 2007 I left the FCO on early retirement to start a new private career as communications consultant andmediator. In 2010 I helped bring together a group of former British Ambassadors to set up a new strategicconsultancy and mediation panel, ADRg Ambassadors.i

The Calamity of British Official Central Planning

8. The FCO and wider UK policies overseas are (like other areas of government) sinking in a Sea ofComplexity.



9. The FCO for well over a decade has been the victim of post-modern deconstruction as the thenGovernment grappled with the operational and philosophical implications of globalisation. The tragic-comicattempt by successive Foreign Secretaries to identify FCO “Strategic Priorities” (see Annex: a posting frommy own website www.charlescrawford.biz from January 2008) exemplifies this embarrassing philosophicaldisarray.

10. Above all, the very idea of diplomacy as a way to advance national interests has been gnawed at bydifferent Whitehall departments and EU Working groups and attendant bureaucracy: most taxpayers’ moneyavailable for British discretionary spending overseas goes to the EU to spend slowly/badly and to a sprawlingDFID operation.

11. At working level British diplomats no longer know what their main effort is. Should they be studyingreal-world powerful interests and working out what HMG should do about them? Or should they focus ongetting the best available wording in a largely irrelevant text through a largely irrelevant EU Working Group?

12. Some of today’s excessive process was invented in the previous Thatcher/Major Conservative era, withthe ostensibly laudable idea of making government policy processes more “businesslike”. But there was (andis) no consensus on what “business” foreign policy actually is. In fact it is a complex mix:

(a) part consultancy (top-level advice on what is happening and how to respond);

(b) part agriculture—planting seeds of goodwill and influence, knowing that some will grow into strongplants in years to come but others will not;

(c) part insurance—developing relations with senior foreign people patiently and deftly when there areno problems in sight, so that when problems occur there is a chance of having essential allies;

(d) part fire-fighting (making an impact in difficult/dangerous situations far from home); and

(e) part service provider (consular/visa work).

13. This is a unique “business” indeed. Because much solid background diplomatic work needed to getresults is in the insurance sector and shows no “measurable” outcome, it tends to be devalued in Treasurycalculations. Two examples:

(a) In 2006–07 the EU Section of the Warsaw Embassy helped muster Polish support for the UK positionagainst the EU Working Time Directive. This helped save UK taxpayers and the wider economyhundreds of millions of pounds. HMG/Treasury methodology allows no way to calculate the benefitof that activity—and to develop the capacity in Embassies to create more results like it;

(b) For all the focus on government targets, there is no obvious attempt to take a hard-nosed look at thebillions(!) of pounds lost to HMG revenues through European cigarette-smuggling and deploy staff inEuropean Embassies to try to stop a good part of it.

14. All in all, the FCO is a small but important part of a civilisational drama of British and Europeangovernance ineffectiveness. Far too much incoherent “process” (generated internally under Treasury andCabinet Office rules, and externally via the EU) is producing both declining impact and growing sloppiness,in style and substance.

Worse Communication

15. The last decade or so has seen a startling loss of quality within the FCO, a phenomenon noted by manyforeign diplomats. It shows itself most dramatically in what ought to be the centrepiece of FCO work—communication. The FCO no longer communicates well with itself, or with its own knowledge.

16. The standard of FCO written work—formerly among the most effective prose work ever achieved in thecivilised world—has dropped. Even work for Ministers often is not being done properly: submissions are beingsent back for reworking as they are so badly written. (Note: I submitted an FOI request about this and wastold that there was no information on the subject.)

17. A number of factors have combined to create and accelerate this decline:

(a) An idea from a few years ago that work needed to be only “fit for purpose”, to save time/resources“wasted” in proof-reading and redrafting. (The point lost here was that creating high-quality work didinvolve commitment, but such good work had many positive demonstration and operational effects,no less real because they were impossible to “measure”.) This change encouraged less goodpresentation and so less good thought/analysis.

(b) That in turn has led to a subliminal sense that correcting another officer’s work is not appropriate orsomehow stuffily “judgemental”. This has come together with the rise of email culture to wreck on-the-job training. Years ago junior officers would be firmly taught by their superiors the fine art ofaccurate drafting. That has largely vanished.

(c) No serious sanctions are imposed on people unable to write well, or unable to supervise good writingin their team.

(d) The wider inability of the UK education system to produce people able to write accurate English isvisible in the work of even the top graduates entering the FCO.



18. The FCO is glumly aware of this and is considering how best to deal with “poor performance”. Oneidea is to move away from “competences” to “skills” in measuring performance. Drafting exams could be setas a condition for getting promoted, perhaps in partnership with an outside academic body, and draftingstandards might be raised for FCO entry.

19. That could make a positive difference over (say) 10 years. But in the short run more drastic action isneeded, most immediately in the form of severe sanctions on senior officials presiding over poor quality work.

Less Knowledge

20. One little-understood cause of quality-decline in the FCO (and perhaps more widely in government) isthe way the introduction of IT systems has been handled.

21. In a nutshell, 20 years ago the FCO still ran paper files. This meant that the evolution of policy in recentyears could be followed by someone unfamiliar with the issues: “read the file”.

22. The introduction of email has led to an explosion of communication. In some ways this has beenbeneficial—free-wheeling networks of officials in the FCO and across Whitehall pull together fast, sophisticatedpositions on EU issues in a way which startles other EU partners who have a much less flexible approach toinformation management.

23. But there is a huge downside too. The FCO is producing large amounts of analysis/information by emailwhich is not easily “searchable”. Partly this is for security reasons—the need for e-firewalls to stop someonewho gets illicit access to one part of the system then getting access to everything. But it also reflects anincoherent approach to information management itself, with no senior ownership of this central issue.

24. The overall result is that the FCO’s collective memory and collective knowledge has plummeted. Thefamous FCO Library has been sent to King’s College London. Research cadres have been downgraded and cut.

25. The results are ruinous. There is no “file”. An officer moved to a different position has no ready way tofind out where the existing policy has come from, so must react in an improvised way to events as they happen.This feeds through into banal analysis and presentation.

26. Urgent changes in FCO data management are needed here to devise new ways to make saving andsearching information a proper professional discipline.

Diminished Judgement

27. It is important to understand that all these tensions come together in the Annual Appraisal system—thebasis upon which FCO people get rewarded/promoted or not. That system sets the key personal incentiveswhich diplomats know they must follow, because it defines what sort of behaviour the FCO really values. Itepitomises the way the FCO thinks of itself.

28. Right at the philosophical heart of diplomacy is the idea of “Judgement”. A sense of judiciously weighingconflicting interests, and balancing short-term gains and risks against long-term gains and risks, then combiningall that in taut advice to Ministers and deft public and private policy presentation. That admittedly hard-to-define idea of judgement—combining in an efficient form principle and pragmatism and operationalcleverness—used to be what gave British diplomacy its operational advantage.

29. In recent years the then Government dropped “Judgement” as a “core competence” in the annualappraisals of FCO staff. This was a serious mistake, revealing a disturbing philosophical confusion comingfrom the very top about the way results in diplomacy are in fact achieved.

30. Contradictions in the FCO appraisal system are reflected in training. In my opinion far too little attentionis given to core technique, and far too much to quasi-ideological training about diversity or “strategic priorities”such as Climate Change (see recent changes to the way graduate new entrants are trained, including a moveaway from basic drafting and other supposedly old-fashioned technical skills).

31. In particular the FCO does too little systematic training in personal communication effectiveness—the“active listening”, negotiating/mediation and public speaking skills which are vital to help UK diplomats getalongside awkward people overseas and influence them effectively, both privately and in public statements.

Delivering foreign policy outcomes

32. It might seem remarkable that the FCO has no clear methodology of how to make a difference overseas.

33. Not too long ago it was inconceivable to our Ministers and senior officials that British diplomacy wouldnot be taken seriously. The UK had in abundance the unambiguous prestige, the permanent UN SecurityCouncil seat, the historical experience, the wisdom and the efficiency to make a systematic difference aroundthe world.

34. That still—mainly—pertains. But competition is getting sharper as assertive new powers emerge on theworld stage, unimpressed with British and European/Western claims to better government and economic



efficiency. This means that the British diplomatic effort (including the wider development effort, ie all resourcesallocated to getting policy results overseas) must be used to the best possible effect.

35. We can no longer assume that diplomatic impact “just happens” on its own. The FCO/DFID andWhitehall must be clear about what works and what does not, in terms of two core tasks:

(a) Understanding foreign governments and cultures.

(b) Being highly skilled in persuasion and negotiation.

36. The FCO has no clear vision of how Embassies and High Commissions in fact have local impact,including through top-level contact-making. This ignorance has been reinforced by a tendency in London tosee policy success in terms not of real-world impact but rather of deals cut in Brussels.

37. The FCO also has done itself a disservice through facile “diversity” initiatives, giving top diplomaticpositions in London to officials who have either not worked in difficult bilateral posts or who have noexperience of diplomacy at all.

38. Take Europe. More and more national policy-making competences have been ceded to EU “qualifiedmajority voting” (accelerating under the Lisbon Treaty), hence the chances of highly damaging and expensive(for UK interests) EU decisions being taken have sharply increased.

39. This means that the operational/political imperative of lobbying hard and well in capitals across Europelikewise has sharply increased: leaving it mainly to haggling on the day in Brussels is highly irresponsible,given the possible impact on the UK of the decisions at stake (see the Working Time Directive example above).

40. Yet the FCO has been scaling back the UK’s European diplomatic network, cutting political andcommercial staff and reducing the seniority/weight/impact of those people still there.

41. If (say) the Germans or Japanese for historical reasons had their Ambassador’s residence in DowningStreet, they would not think that as a problem—they would fight tooth and nail to keep it, as a symbol both oftheir power and of their close relations with the UK.

42. By contrast in Warsaw HMG for decades have had a purpose-built Residence on a prime site close tothe Prime Minister’s Office and the President’s Palace. For cost-cutting reasons this is now being given up infavour of a smaller house much further from the centre—a dismal signal of how we see ourselves (and ourrelations with Poland.)

43. Further erosions in our diplomatic presence and profile overseas are expected as part of government cuts.Money allocated to DFID/development is rising. A tiny fraction of that extra development spending (too muchof which anyway goes to consultants and inflated global development officials’ salaries) would be much betterspent in enhancing the way we make diplomatic impact overseas.

44. An example. The 2008 UK National Security Strategy reported that HMG would be committing up to£243 million in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the coming three years.

45. This is a startling sum of money—have British taxpayers really been getting good value for it? Had theOccupied Palestinian Territories been allocated only a mere £223 million instead, the FCO might not now beunder pressure to sell off key historical assets and to give ill-qualified (and cheaper) younger people seniorpositions, thereby reducing the practical operational impact of all our policy worked overseas.

46. At the policy level successive governments have tried to free up funds to support active policy work onthe ground overseas, by creating a central pool of money run by the FCO, DFID and MOD. There is of coursea key role for spending money on strategic cross-cutting issues, but in my experience the whole process becameheavily bureaucratic and over-processed.

47. A simple devolution of funds to all Embassies/Missions round the world with minimum process and awillingness to take chances (subject to proper accounting procedures) would transform the impact of Britishdiplomacy round the world. Not all spending will hit the best targets, but the fact that an Embassy hassignificant discretionary funds to spend gives the local British team a huge impact-boost in many places.

What is to be done?

48. To restore the primacy of technique and link technique to intelligent process and to move on to achievepowerful British impact overseas, some of the following ideas for reform (big and small) are worth considering:

(a) If DFID and the FCO are not to be re-merged, a radical new look at achieving outcomes is needed.

(b) Formally delink FCO/DFID from all Treasury target-setting, as it assumes a “cause and effect” clarityin policy outcome which may or may not be credible for domestic policy-setting but is simplyimpossible overseas. Identify instead a few common sense principles, then tell staff to get on withpursuing them.

(c) Legally redefine “development” to include a much wider set of foreign policy outcomes (includinghonest/limited government, wider global institutional stability, work against organised crime, pro-active cooperation with the private sector to create jobs). Set aside a major slice of DFID money



towards achieving British national foreign policy results via a new inter-departmental structure chairedby a non-DFID person and with non-DFID spending processes.

(d) Make English language teaching a specific development goal, liberating DFID money to help spreadEnglish language skills and British values.

(e) The just-do-it ethos of the Know How Fund set up when communism ended in the early 1990s shouldbe re-invented. Launch an urgent, brutal review of FCO/DFID processes from top to bottom aimed atslashing junk “process” and improving access to collective knowledge-bases. Scrap “risk-management matrices”.

(f) Few world problems won’t be improved by a small fund plus clever nimble people (not necessarilyall British) tasked with attacking them from all angles (see eg the £4m fund deployed overtly andcovertly to help Serbian democrats overthrow Milosevic, Robin Cook’s top foreign policy success).

(g) Focus on creating both “hard” power and “soft” power tools. On hard power create a senior task-forceto identify a tool-box of sharp-end techniques which can be learned and applied systematically(positive and negative incentives, divide-and-rule, non-violent “tricks”). Diplomats faced withproblems need to know how best to tackle them, drawing on what worked elsewhere.

(h) On soft power, follow the example of the new European External Action Service and bring inspecialised mediation training; launch a generously funded new UK-promoted International MediationInitiative or somesuch to help bring skilled British-led problem-solving techniques and associatedresources to problems big and small around the world.

(i) Make a flat-out investment in the secure IT/technical and other operational spending overseas neededto make our external effort fit for purpose. Every FCO diplomat and DFID official overseas should bea mobile IT powerhouse.

(j) To help make this work in practice, move to simplify most national security classifications to threebasic categories: Unclassified, Confidential (not for foreign governments or the media) and Secret(seriously sensitive and/or intelligence related).

(k) Follow the clever Dutch example and give Embassies not the FCO in London the lead responsibilityfor managing information and policy about the countries they cover.

(l) Devolve much more money to Embassy levels to spend according to local discretion (includingawarding performance bonuses)—abolish wasteful micro priority-setting in London.

(m) Think harder about how best to use EU structures and the new EEAS. Both senior and good buddingdiplomats alike need to be seconded to get a strong British ethos built into the EEAS from the start,to help define a sensible balance between EU-level and national level diplomacy and so keep ournational foreign policy effective.

(n) Use the current crisis in the Eurozone to start thinking about pushing to restore most/all EUdevelopment funding to member states, some of it pooled informally in a nimble “coalition of theEuropean competent” where this makes practical sense.

(o) Restore coherence to HMG’s diplomatic operations overseas. All Whitehall personnel posted to anEmbassy/mission should answer to the British Ambassador/High Commissioner and operate under asingle Whitehall-wide “external contract” setting pay and conditions, with similarly unified pay andconditions for “their” local staff too.

(p) Think again about how the FCO presents itself to the public. End Ambassadorial blogging, Twitteringand other weedy gimmicks. Make sure that senior guests at the FCO and at Embassies abroad arewelcomed speedily and courteously. Reboot the FCO website to have a much sharper focus onpolicy issues.

(q) Abolish all internal diversity processes in favour of Good Manners. Announce that all employees willbe treated fairly and with respect and are expected to work hard and loyally. Then enforce it.

(r) Sharpen up personal standards of appearance and presentation (handling of senior guests etc).

Conclusion

49. In my view the British taxpayers are getting a poor return for their investment in political anddevelopment work overseas. As the global situation gets quickly more fluid and uncertain, this is a dangerousluxury we can no longer afford. We need to be determined—even as necessary ruthless—in identifying andpursuing national policy goals.

50. We need to set aside once and for all the weary cliché of “punching above our weight”. We should useto maximum effect the considerable weight the UK has by any international standards: to do what can be doneby persuasion and influence, but be ready to deliver hard, frequent, guileful policy punches when necessary.Because that is what other countries are trying to do to us.

51. The first step to achieving that is to grasp that when necessary we are in the punching business. Not thehand-wringing business.

52. The second is to make sure that UK diplomats have the flexible training and tools they need to beeffective in understanding and influencing foreign elites.



53. Above all, without looking hard at first principles of Diplomatic Technique the FCO is not going to dothe job which No 10 and Whitehall need doing: understanding and influencing foreigners, thereby givingWhitehall authoritative advice on how to get the best policy results beyond our own borders.

54. If we continue as we are the UK’s policy impact overseas will diminish, just when our strong convincingvoice for democratic standards and values is just what the world needs to hear.

Reference

i www.adrgambassadors.com

26 November 2010

Annex

FCO STRATEGIC PRIORITIES—WHERE’S THE BEEF?

The text of a piece posted on 20 January 2008 at http://charlescrawford.biz/blog.php?single=32

The blog of Foreign Secretary David Miliband on the FCO website is an interesting attempt to makeMinisters and the foreign policy process more accessible to the public.

The tricky thing with such initiatives aimed at reflecting what busy senior people think is that busy peopleare busy. So keeping a blog fresh (and plausibly looking like the busy people themselves have written it) isnot easy.

One entry says the following:

And the foreign policy priorities we pursue define key issues in our foreign relations. From April therewill be four of these priorities (replacing the combination of 10 policy and service priorities until now—no organisation can have 10 priorities).

This thought was expanded in his article in The Times on 6 January. The FCO is going on a DiplomaticSurge. Instead of the previous 10 Strategic Priorities the FCO now will have four “key policy goals”.

Do I detect a wisp of “thank goodness the grown-ups are in charge now and getting a grip on this collectionof twerps who overloaded themselves with far too many priorities”?

The blog formulation is carefully worded. It was not the Government which erred in having too manyforeign priorities—it was the organisation!

Yet don’t I dimly recall that it was Ministers in this Government who made us draw up Strategic Prioritiesin the first place? Yes, it’s all coming back ...

First we had seven. Then we had eight.

Then we had nine.

Then, gloriously, we reached 10!

Now we are reduced to a measly four Key Policy Goals, albeit with free added Surge. All in some 260

weeks.

Each strategic change ordered, endorsed and indeed proudly announced by FCO Ministers themselves andsupported unambiguously by Cabinet colleagues and the Prime Minister.

Each with laborious consultation processes around Whitehall to get “buy-in” and then all sorts of attemptsto rejig FCO internal structures and spending to fit everything neatly into one or other of these seven/eight/nine/10/four boxes.

Each with diplomats at all levels fretting over forms allocating the time of every member of the FCO inmicroscopic percentages to each of the seven/eight/nine/10/four Priorities/Goals, rather than just getting outthere hard to promote British interests.

Crawford’s First Law of Bureaucracy: The capacity of a Ministry to do anything useful strategically is

in indirect proportion to the amount of time it spends preparing its strategies.

A Yugoslav joke about the endless and pointless rearrangements of the communist self-management systemby chief ideologue Kardelj.

Kardelj was asked how to cure a sick cow. He advised cooling it right down with ice-packs. The cowgot worse.

He recommended heating it right up with blankets and electric fires. The cow got worse.

He recommended feeding it masses of extra food. The cow got worse.



He recommended starving it. The cow died.

“Boze boze, what a tragedy! I am a skilled vet and I had so many more cures to propose...!”

Written evidence from The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)

Summary

— The FCO has a crucial role to play as lead department on the UK Overseas Territories, in particularwith regard to their highly threatened environments.

— The very limited capacity of these small communities means that FCO support is essential if theirunique biodiversity is to be conserved and the UK’s international obligations met.

— Current levels of environmental funding for the Overseas Territories remain grossly inadequate.The FCO must strengthen the Overseas Territories Environment Programme and obtain increasedfinancial support from Defra, DfID and DCMS.

— The FCO has a vital role to play in representing the interests of the Overseas Territories acrossWhitehall, where they are frequently overlooked.

— The upcoming cross-government strategy on the Overseas Territories is warmly welcomed andcould provide an excellent example of the FCO fulfilling the much-needed leadership role.

— The new Overseas Territory strategy must include a section on the environment and a strategicassessment of urgent environmental funding priorities.

— Governors’ offices have a critical role to play in improving the environmental governance of theOverseas Territories and building the capacity of both their governmental and non-governmentalenvironmental institutions.

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission to this consultation. Our response centres on the FCO’srole as the Government department with overall responsibility for the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs), witha particular focus on their highly threatened environments.

1. The RSPB is the UK partner of BirdLife International, a network of over 100 grass-roots conservationorganisations around the world. As part of our commitment to the conservation of biodiversity worldwide, wehave for over 14 years provided financial, technical and advisory support to emerging NGO partners and localgovernments in the UK Overseas Territories.

2. The RSPB works on the Overseas Territories because of their outstanding global importance forbiodiversity. These remote jurisdictions are home to well over 500 species found nowhere else on earth,including more endangered bird species than the entire European continent. Their unique habitats are alsointernationally recognised, containing the world’s largest and most pristine coral atoll (the Great Chagos Bank)and, arguably, the most important seabird island on the planet (Gough Island). This remarkable richness placesa very high level of responsibility on the UK Government to protect the biodiversity of these Territories.

The UK Overseas Territories

3. Whilst rich in unique wildlife, the human populations of the Overseas Territories are small. For example,the Pitcairn Islands support more endemic species than their total human population.10 The Territories arehighly dependent upon the natural environment for their livelihoods—the economies of many of the islands relyheavily on the revenue raised from fisheries and nature tourism. However, much of their unique biodiversity isunder severe threat. Over 90 UKOT species are now classified as critically endangered (compared to just 14critically endangered species in the UK), and the last global extinction in the UKOTs occurred as recently as2003 (the St. Helena Olive).

4. The Territories’ capacity to respond to environmental crises and conserve their threatened wildlife isstrongly constrained by limited human and financial resources. Environment departments and local conservationorganisations, if they exist, only have small numbers of staff that are stretched very thinly. In some Territories,for example Tristan da Cunha or Pitcairn, the population is so small that no significant capacity or finance isavailable to deal with pressing environmental issues. On yet other Territories, for example, BIOT or SouthGeorgia, there is no local population and the FCO has direct responsibility.

5. Although the Overseas Territories are locally self-governed, the UK Government retains responsibility forexternal affairs, including the implementation of international conventions such as the Convention on BiologicalDiversity, the Ramsar Convention, the Cartagena Convention, the World Heritage Convention, CITES, theConvention on Migratory Species and the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels. The UKGovernment has also signed up to the 2020 target to halt the loss of biodiversity, which makes the Territoriesa very high priority for action as over 87% of the threatened species for which the UK is responsible are foundthere. Finally, the UK Government has signed an Environment Charter with most of the Territories, which is aformal agreement that lists the commitments of the respective parties to support environmental management.10 There are only 47 Pitcairn Islanders and over 70 endemic species in the Pitcairn Island group.



6. The current lack of capacity and finance in many Territories means that UK Government support isessential if species extinctions are to be prevented, the economic benefits derived from the natural environmentmaintained, and international obligations met. The FCO, as the Government department with overallresponsibility for the Overseas Territories, therefore has a clear role to play in ensuring that the urgentlyrequired conservation action is supported and delivered.

7. In July 2008, the Foreign Affairs Committee produced a Report on the Overseas Territories. In its Report,the Committee argued that the current levels of environmental funding provided by the UK are “grosslyinadequate” and recommended that it should be increased.11 The RSPB has calculated that a minimum of £16million/year is required for the Territories to meet their biodiversity priorities.12 If increased funding is notidentified, endemic species for which the UK Government is responsible will certainly become extinct and theUK Government will fail to meet a number of its international obligations. It will also increase the risk of theUK being seen as hypocritical in urging other nations, such as those with rainforests, to take conservationaction whilst we do not conserve threatened biodiversity within our own jurisdiction.

The FCO’s Role in UK Government

8. The tiny communities of the 14 Overseas Territories have very limited representation in the apparatus ofthe UK Government. Unlike France, they have neither a “Ministry of the Overseas Territories” to advocatetheir interests, nor any representation or official observers within the Houses of Parliament. Although they havevery specific needs, communities such as Pitcairn (47 inhabitants) do not have the capacity to staff permanentUK delegations to represent their interests. Consequently, the Overseas Territories have very little voice inWestminster and have been frequently overlooked. The FCO thus has a crucial role to play in representingtheir interests to other Departments across the entire breadth of Government activity.

9. The RSPB warmly welcomes the commitment in the FCO’s new Business Plan to develop a new cross-government strategy on the Overseas Territories by July 2011. Such a joined-up strategy is urgently needed.At present, FCO, Defra, DfID, DCMS and MoD all cover issues affecting the UKOTs, though the lack of ajoined-up strategy means that the Territories have frequently fallen through gaps in clear Departmentalresponsibility. A strategic approach is desperately required, with one department, the FCO, taking a clearresponsibility for overall delivery.

10. The new Overseas Territories strategy must include a section on the environment. The Foreign AffairsCommittee in its 2008 report highlighted the fact that the Government has not “carried out any kind of strategicassessment of Overseas Territories’ funding requirements for conservation and ecosystem management”, anddescribed this lack of action as “highly negligent”. Such a strategic assessment of urgent funding priorities isyet to be carried out, let alone funded appropriately. A comprehensive assessment of the state of biodiversityin the UKOTs, with prioritised actions and concomitant funding, is required.

11. At present, the FCO contributes approximately £500,000 per year to the Overseas Territories EnvironmentProgramme (OTEP), a fund run jointly with DfID to support biodiversity conservation in the UKOTs. Thefund clearly represents some of the most cost-effective conservation spending possible, but it can only meet afraction of the demands required of it and, crucially, has not been able to provide the long-term institutionalcapacity which small agencies on the Territories need. There is also no long-term guarantee for the fund whichmeans it cannot be used strategically. The continuation of a strengthened OTEP is required, as is the provisionof adequate financial and human resources to support and strengthen the UKOTs’ limited capacity. This mustbe achieved either by obtaining increased funding from other Government departments such as Defra, DfIDand DCMS, or by focusing further FCO spending on the Territories.

12. The FCO, as overall lead department on the UK Overseas Territories, has to ensure that other departmentsdo not overlook their UKOT responsibilities. It is simply not enough for the FCO to point to other Governmentdepartments as being responsible for particular issues. As overall lead department, the FCO has to work toensure that other departments actually deliver their responsibilities. At present, the Territories are frequentlyoverlooked. For instance, Defra took lead department responsibility for UKOT biodiversity in 2009. However,the Department still has no full-time staff working on Overseas Territories issues and made no mention of theUKOTs in its recent Business Plan, despite the Territories being home to over 87% of the threatened speciesfor which the UK is responsible. DCMS provides a further example. The department is the lead on the WorldHeritage Convention, yet has provided no funding towards the restoration of threatened UKOT World HeritageSites, as urgently required by the UN.13 DCMS sets the policy directions for the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF),one of the key sources of funding for World Heritage Sites in the metropolitan UK, but the UK focus of thesedirections effectively renders UKOT World Heritage Sites ineligible due to their location. In this instance, theMinister for the Overseas Territories, Henry Bellingham, has announced that he will approach DCMS to makethe case for including the UKOTs in HLF funding. We believe this is an excellent example of the FCO fulfilling11 Report is available at:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmfaff/147/147i.pdf.12 The Costing Biodiversity Conservation Priorities in the UK Overseas Territories report is available on the RSPB website at:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/ukotfinancingcons_tcm9–158352.pdf.13 August 2010: Henderson Island World Heritage Site (Pitcairn), Decision 34COM 7B.27. June 2009: Gough & Inaccessible

Islands World Heritage Site (Tristan da Cunha), Decision 33COM 7B.32.



its role of representing the Overseas Territories within Whitehall, and would welcome similar action withother departments.

13. Even if Defra and DCMS do step up to the mark, the FCO still has an important role to play as it hasdirect contact with the Territories and so is often in a position to represent or support their biodiversity interests.The in-Territory knowledge and relationships of FCO staff are crucial for the delivery of effective and strategicUK Government action. Moreover, the FCO has direct responsibility for some of the most biodiverse andecologically important Territories of all—BIOT and South Georgia—so must be able to work on environmentalissues itself.

14. The RSPB would suggest that one indicator for assessing the Foreign Secretary’s claim to be putting theFCO “at the centre of Government” is by monitoring whether the department is effective at mainstreaming oneof its core responsibilities—the Overseas Territories—into the other relevant Government departments.

15. The FCO must also work to ensure that the interests of the UKOTs are better represented at an EU level.For instance, the EU’s main funding tool for biodiversity (LIFE +) is currently closed to the UK OverseasTerritories, though open to the French Outermost Regions. Such a major funding source would have a highlysignificant impact on UKOT conservation, and the FCO needs to work with Defra to ensure that strongrepresentations are made to the European Commission in order to open up LIFE + and develop new fundingstreams like the BEST initiative.14

The Role of the FCO’s Network of Overseas Posts

16. The RSPB appreciates the support given by Governor’s offices on Territories to biodiversity conservationprojects, as well as efforts made by the FCO to brief Governors and other office-holders before they take upoffice on Territories. However, considering the fundamental importance of the natural environment to theeconomies of the Territories, we are concerned that some posts do not give it sufficient priority. As Governorsare involved in the highest levels of decision-making in the Territories, they could play a much greater rolein ensuring:

(a) better provision of information to Territory governments on the importance of the natural environmentto the economy and quality of life.

(b) the UK Government’s responsibilities for international conventions such as the Convention onBiological Diversity are implemented.

(c) the establishment and implementation of effective environmental governance systems on the territories(eg land planning, strategic environment assessment, environmental impact assessment etc.).

(d) the promotion of UK conservation expertise in the Territories and support to UK fundedenvironmental projects.

(e) the provision of support to assist capacity-building in civil society within the environment sector.

(f) the encouragement of all Territories to ratify and strengthen existing multilateral environmentalagreements by helping to implement them through the provision of financial and technical support.

(g) all development programmes, particularly those funded by the UK Government, undergo appropriateenvironmental assessment before they are considered for approval.

(h) greater support from the FCO and UK Government in responding rapidly to urgent environmentalthreats.15

The FCO’s Role in Explaining UK Foreign Policy to the British Public

17. The FCO has a key role to explain to the British public the UK’s responsibilities with regard to theOverseas Territories. Greater awareness of the Overseas Territories would help solve many of the problemsthat arise from being out-of-sight and thus out-of-mind. For instance, the French Government has declared2011 to be the Year of its Overseas Territories. A similar action in the UK would be of great benefit inshowcasing to the British public the unique communities and biodiversity for which the UK is responsible.

The FCO’s Role in Relation to Non-governmental Organisations

18. Non-governmental organisations such as the RSPB have a long history of working effectively inpartnership with emerging NGO partners and local governments in the Overseas Territories. This has lead to adetailed understanding of the particular environmental challenges faced by the individual Territories, as wellas long-term relationships with key partners. NGOs such as the RSPB are thus well placed to work with andadvise the FCO on the development of relevant policy. NGOs can also deliver desired conservation outcomes.A pertinent example is the RSPB’s Henderson Island Restoration Project, to which the FCO has contributed£188,000 via the Overseas Territories Environment Programme (OTEP). The RSPB has raised over £900,000from non-governmental sources and will soon lead the operation to save this threatened World Heritage Site.14 The voluntary scheme for Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services in the European Overseas Territories (BEST) is a follow-up to

the “Message from Reunion”. It aims to establish a voluntary scheme for the protection of species and habitats, inspired by theNatura 2000 approach. It is currently under discussion at the European Commission.

15 For instance the 2006 stranding of an oilrig off the coast of Tristan da Cunha, or the introduction of new invasive alien species.



19. The FCO also needs to work to build up effective and sustainable non-governmental organisations in theOverseas Territories. Civil society has a very valuable role to play in improving governance and deliveringsuccessful, community-supported conservation outcomes. Many Territory-based NGOs rely to a significantextent on funding from Territory governments however, so are not able to respond objectively when consultedon issues such as development proposals because they may be threatened with budget cuts if they raiseobjections. Staff at these very small organisations may also not have the skills and/or sufficient time to engageeffectively in policy or planning processes. The FCO and the Governors’ offices need to work to support civilsociety in the Overseas Territories, consulting with local organisations early and often, and helping them tobuild capacity.

29 November 2010

Written evidence from Professor Tony Chafer, University of Portsmouth

About the author: Professor of Contemporary French Area Studies specialising in UK/French/EU Africapolicy.

The perception I have gained from my research on Africa policy in London, Paris and Brussels is that policyrelating to Africa is often short-termist and preoccupied with meeting, often annual, targets, with the result thata long-term view of the strategic importance of Africa is not taken and that the resources deployed in supportof UK Africa policy by the FCO/MoD/DfID are not deployed in a strategic way (eg initiatives launched oneyear and then abandoned a year or two years later, leading to waste of effort and resources).

On Africa policy, both London and Paris are confronted by what one might describe as the “ends vs. means”dilemma: in other words, both the UK and France wish to remain key players in Africa but increasingly donot have the means (financial and personnel) of their ambitions. In order to retain their position and influencein Africa, and against the background of expensive commitments in other parts of the world, they are thereforeobliged both to cooperate with other external powers and build partnerships within Africa (eg with regionalorganisations such as ECOWAS) in order to achieve their policy goals within Africa. The former is especiallyimportant in terms of mobilising support (and, at EU level, resources) for the pursuit of such goals.

The question that therefore seems to arise in the context of a research project I recently undertook with DrGordon Cumming (Cardiff University) is the following:

— do the FCO (together with the DfID) and the Quai d’Orsay (together with the Elysée) have aninstitutional framework for the pursuit of common goals in Africa? While we have found examplesof France and Britain working together on certain issues, notably in the security field, this oftenseems to be on an ad hoc basis, depending on personalities on the ground or on good personalrelationships between politicians or officials in London and Paris, rather than on any systematiccommitment to cooperation at Ministry level.

— to what extent do the FCO and the Quai d’Orsay have a shared understanding of key issuesconfronting Africa and of the most effective ways of addressing these? Again, we have foundexamples of such understanding, again notably in the security field, but this often appears to be at“operational level” and born of circumstances—eg the need to address immediate problems—rather than any systematic commitment to cooperation.

— how systematically is the “ends vs. means” dilemma being addressed by the UK government withrespect to African policy? The French government seems both more committed to, and moresuccessful at, mobilising the support and resources of other countries, at EU level in particular, inpursuit of its policy objectives in Africa, than the UK has been to date.

— following on from this, what are the opportunities for policy coordination and cooperation betweenLondon and Paris on African policy and how might they best be pursued? The UK and France, bytheir history, have an exceptional depth and breadth of both knowledge and experience of theAfrican continent. Yet, Anglo-French cooperation has so far been limited and restricted largely tothe security field. Are there not other policy areas where France and the UK have common policyinterests and where there might be benefits to be derived from working together?

— The UK needs to move beyond a policy of focusing its engagement on its traditional interlocutors(eg Nigeria in West Africa, Kenya in East Africa) and on the AU, and should look also toincreasing its engagement with regional organisations in Africa (eg ECOWAS).

— in the context of new external powers (China, Brazil, India, Japan, Turkey) becoming increasinglyactive in Africa, the UK risks losing out in terms of its influence in Africa if it does not adopt amore strategic approach to cooperation with other key partners (eg France) with an interest inAfrica and if it does not work more closely with its partners to mobilise resources at EU Level(European Council, Commission) in pursuit of HMG’s goals on the continent.

29 November 2010



Written evidence from Professor Ritchie Robertson, Taylor Chair of German, University of Oxford;

Professor Sarah Colvin, Director, Institute for German Studies, University of Birmingham, and Dr

Peter Thompson, Senior Lecturer in German, University of Sheffield

We would like to submit the following points for consideration to this Inquiry.

We work in Modern European Languages (MEL—in our case specifically German) at Oxford, Birminghamand Sheffield Universities and are submitting this in response to recent concern in our field about the directionin which government thinking about MEL has taken over the past few years. Language departments aroundthe country are under extreme pressure to cut or even close due to budgetary considerations but this comes ata point in the economic cycle in which export and globalised trade relations are said to be taking on a newsignificance. Apart from the obvious cultural and intellectual benefits of having a multi-lingual nation, we feelthat we can make a good case for MEL degrees in purely utilitarian terms. We would therefore wish to submitthe following points for consideration:

1. In response to the question posed by the Foreign Affairs Committee: “Especially given the spendingconstraints set out in the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), how—if at all—could the FCO betterorganise and utilise its financial and human resources so as to fulfil its role?”

The CSR mentioned “strategically important languages”. European languages require support, particularlyGerman, the language of the EU’s largest and most successful economy. Our universities need to produce aregular supply of graduates fluent in German (and other languages). We therefore recommend that the FCOshould institute language bursaries at appropriate universities for promising students who might otherwise havedifficulty in paying tuition fees. In addition we feel that there should be no cut in the level of HEFCE teachinggrant going to Modern Languages on the grounds that they should be considered “strategically important”.

2. In response to the Committee’s request for “submissions which address, in particular, ... the FCO’s role inthe management and implementation of EU business for the UK Government.”

Given a worrying decline in the number of UK nationals active in the European Institutions (less than 5%),the FCO must support the interests and influence of the UK Government by actively supporting HE teachingin European languages and cultures, thereby ensuring continued entry into the European Fast Stream by talentedBritish graduates.

More broadly, “Language skills are crucial for growth and jobs. Each year, thousands of European companieslose business and miss out on contracts as a result of their lack of language skills and intercultural competence”.

(European Commission website: “Multilingualism”). We would like to draw the FCO’s attention to MichaelWorton’s report into HE modern languages teaching of 2009, which concludes that “the study of and researchinto languages are just as important as STEMM”. Worton notes that the current decline in modern languagelearning will lead to the UK becoming one of the most monolingual countries in the world, and that thishas implications:

— For the economy and our ability to do business competitively.

— For the development of generations of young people as global citizens.

— For the maintenance of the UK as a global hub for research.

The EU in its “Speaking for Europe” paper suggests that short-term savings made in the provision of modernEuropean languages provision is a false economy in the most straightforward sense: “The EU is convinced thatthe cost of promoting the use of a second and third language by EU citizens is modest compared with theprofessional and personal opportunities lost—and the negative effects of the EU economy [...]—due toinadequate language skills”. This means that a key element in the FCO’s management and implementation ofEU business for the UK Government must be the championing of modern European languages.

3. The most recent report by HECSU

The most recent report by HECSU16 shows that MEL graduates continue to be highly sought after byemployers. On all counts, from employability to initial income levels, Modern Languages graduates come justbehind the most practical degrees in Medicine and Law. One of the reasons for this is that an essential part ofa Modern Languages degree is the compulsory Year Abroad, which gives students an edge in language skills,life experience and maturity. Given that the European Parliament is reportedly having to cancel debates due tothe shortage of native English-speaking interpreters and businesses are losing contracts because of a shortageof good translators and interpreters, we see the defence of MEL degrees in our Universities as a centralchallenge for the Foreign Office.

29 November 2010

16 http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/research_reports_what_do_graduates_do_november_2010.htm



Written evidence from LSE IDEAS, the Centre for Diplomacy and Strategy at the London School of

Economics

This evidence draws on The Future of UK Foreign Policy, an IDEAS Special Report, available at http://www2.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/SR006.aspx.

The traditional view of the FCO as a global diplomatic network using its local assets and specialised expertiseto drive British foreign policy from the heart of government has been undermined in recent years by fourdevelopments:

(1) The shift towards Prime-ministerial control of foreign policy decision-making;

(2) The loss of regional expertise due in part to budget cuts, but also deriving from…

(3) …the shift towards functional structuring of the bureaucracy around particular issues as opposed tomaintaining a regional focus;

(4) The demotion of the role of the UK’s embassy network in the policy decision-making process.

The current government has sought to reaffirm the traditional model, and this is to be welcomed. However,the Foreign Secretary’s “prosperity agenda” threatens to cast diplomats as salesmen for UK Plc, rather than asthe guardians of the national interest, which can. This is particularly worrying given that priorities of commerce,security and values may clash. Policy making and policy implementation are not inherently separateundertakings, and diplomatic expertise should be reinstated to a central position in formulating foreign policy;the FCO should be more than simply a coordinating body for HMG interests abroad. It is worrying thereforethat the FCO’s research analysts may be decentralised and placed under the control of individual directorates,depriving them of central coordination and the ability to engage comprehensively with the expertise ofacademia and think tanks.

The relationship between the FCO and DFID is central to formulating coherent strategy. In certain areas ofthe world, and in particular in failed and failing states, it may be appropriate for DFID, with its expertise indevelopment, to take the lead role in diplomatic engagement. However, in these areas, FCO and DFID prioritiesneed to be brought into line with each other on the basis of the national interest. Development aid and effort,whilst laudable in its own right, should be predicated on the long term security interests of the UK.

The cumulative impact of the recent NSS, SDSR and CSR undermined the capacities available to the FCOin formulating and implementing UK foreign policy. Whilst the Government’s attempt to review British strategywas laudable, and the new processes surrounding the National Security Council are to be welcomed, thefinancial outcomes have been determined more by political and bureaucratic drivers than by sustained andcoherent strategic thought, with the result that the ends and means of UK foreign policy will remaininappropriately matched. In particular, the continued funding of capital-intensive military systems, predicatedon the unlikely possibility of major military confrontation, is hard to square with a world where the corethreats terrorism and cyber threats require intelligence and technical capacities far more than hardware. A morecomprehensive strategy review would have diverted more funds towards the diplomatic assets of the FCO.

Substantive diplomatic engagement is what underpins both Britain’s hard and soft power, and investment inthe UK’s diplomatic capacity is crucial to the success of strategy in a world that increasingly depends onspecific local knowledge born of strong and sustained relationships. Traditional British diplomatic strengths offlexibility, pragmatism and egalitarianism are uniquely suited to the complex world we face; cuts to what is arelatively inexpensive area of government spending, particularly when compared directly to defence andinternational development, threaten that legacy and Britain’s ability to play a truly effective international role.

29 November 2010

Written evidence from the City of London Corporation

Introduction

1. This memorandum is submitted on behalf of the City of London Corporation in the context of its role inpromoting and reinforcing the competitiveness of the UK-based financial services sector, for which “the City”is now commonly used as shorthand. The City engages closely with professional services and other businessesin carrying out its overseas visits and works to represent businesses across the UK. The City Corporation’spromotion of London and the UK as a centre for business and finance is spear-headed by the Lord Mayor who,in collaboration with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and UK Trade and Investment, leads businessdelegations to financial markets around the world. In this capacity the City engages with emerging as well asestablished financial centres. The City Corporation also supports TheCityUK—an independent body recentlycreated, with Government and industry support, to promote the UK’s financial and professional services sector.

2. The “Square Mile” is internationally-owned, internationally-managed and internationally-staffed. Much ofthe business done could be undertaken in other centres where the two key factors, capital and expertise, arepresent. Nevertheless the fact that it is done in London and elsewhere in the UK has positive benefits for theUK in terms of corporate profits, tax receipts, employment and export earnings.



Consultation

3. Especially given the spending constraints set out in the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review, how—ifat all—could the FCO better organise and utilise its financial and human resources so as to fulfil its role?

— The City Corporation accepts the need for the spending constraints in the CSR and the consequentrequirement to rationalise resources deployed in overseas Posts. It is however suggested that thisshould not be seen as a one–way process: the world economy is changing shape and focus rapidlyand it is likely that new centres of political and commercial importance will emerge, requiring newor additional resource to promote and protect British interests. This evidently applies today toAsia. The Lord Mayor’s and City Corporation’s programme of visits is well placed to help UKTIand FCO maximise their impact in overseas markets.

4. How does the FCO work across Whitehall; Are the FCO and its resources organised so as to facilitatecross-Government cooperation?

— The City Corporation welcomes the FCO’s new focus on trade and investment issues. It is howeverimportant that UKTI’s existing role in supporting and engaging with business should not beovershadowed by its larger parent department, and that the complementary roles of BIS and HMTreasury (with its particular focus on financial services and the encouragement of capital flows)should also be recognised. From the City’s perspective it would be particularly valuable if theFCO’s stepped-up engagement in this area could focus on building on the intelligence it generates,the opportunities it opens up and ensuring that commercial issues are more fully integrated withthe political agenda. The distinction between departments is not significant to overseas stakeholdersdealing with staff at Post, and City businesses and stakeholders look for a similarly joined upapproach in the UK—ideally UKTI as the lead body dealing directly with them, and engaging thewider scope of FCO, BIS and HMT capacity on a more strategic level.

5. What should be the role of the FCO’s network of overseas posts?

— The City Corporation works closely with the FCO’s overseas posts in support of a number ofobjectives:

— The promotion of the UK based financial and professional services industry and work to breakdown barriers to market entry for international firms. The Lord Mayor as de facto ambassadorfor the UK based F&PS industry will travel to around 25 overseas markets and 36 citiespromoting the industry. On each visit the Lord Mayor heads a relevant and targeted delegationchosen to reflect issues relevant to the host country. The business group invariably comprisesCEO and senior practitioner level members—by way of example, the London Stock Exchangechairman, alongside a small high-powered team, accompanied the Lord Mayor on a recent tripto India. FCO and UKTI staff in overseas Posts own, manage and deliver these programmes inmarket, and further support the accompanying business delegations that join these visits. Eachvisit seeks to advance FCO/HMG policy objectives as well as those of the businesscommunity.

— The promotion of opportunities to influence senior visitors to the UK, in support of UKobjectives. The City of London host a large throughput of senior decision makers (bothGovernment and business) to promote the strengths of the City and facilitate introductions toUK-based financial and professional services firms.

— The overseas post network provides valuable intelligence on changes in regulation, legislationand economic developments throughout the globe—the City Corporation on behalf ofprofessional services, and with a view to maximising efficiency of resources, would welcomethe ability to tap more easily into this flow of relevant information.

— The City Corporation believes that overseas posts need to retain a strong focus on promotingBritish business in terms of both attracting enhanced levels of foreign direct investment andidentifying and supporting trade development opportunities. Overseas posts need to be staffedand resourced with a high calibre of staff, with the ability to break down market access issuesand set them in the wider politico-economic context as the UK seeks to stimulate a tradedriven recovery.

— There is considerable value added to business promotion by high quality economic reporting.It is desirable that economic and trade intelligence amassed by Posts should have a widerdistribution than it currently receives.

— High level engagement at post on business issues by Political and Economic staff—includingHeads of Mission—adds huge value to the UK’s trade promotion. The City Corporation isgreatly encouraged by signs of such engagement among many of those currently occupyingHead of Mission and other senior roles, and hopes that the “new commercial diplomacy” willreinforce this focus.



— It is essential that FCO Posts retain a sense of ownership over the issue of business visas forshort-term business visitors to the UK. While it is accepted that the management of thissystem has been “contracted out” and the responsible home department is UKBA, the promptand efficient issuing of visas to legitimate business visitors is essential to our commercialinterests, and reinforces the perception that the UK is indeed “open for business”. Delayed,inefficient or unnecessarily prescriptive treatment of applicants can in contrast leave a lastingbad impression. Better co-ordination on visa issues, and recognition of the importance ofcommercial priorities (for example, staff of an inward investment target or major investor),could make a large difference—but the responses of UKBA and UKTI often seem to be atodds. HMG should also be aware that in other countries, there is significant discretion overthe granting of visas—treating this simply as a processing issue is detrimental to wider tradeand business engagement efforts.

2 December 2010

Written evidence from the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum (UKOTCF)

Summary

An important part of the FCO’s role is to ensure that the distinctive interests of the overseas territories aretaken into account right across government. As lead department for the UK overseas territories, the FCO needsto act as their guardians and ensure that all government departments play their role in safeguarding thoseinterests. Parliament needs to be able to rely on the FCO to support the effectiveness of appropriate institutionsof good governance in the territories (eg freedom of information acts, an Ombudsman or equivalent, provisionfor independent review of major planning and fiscal decisions). Where non-governmental organisations in theterritories and in the UK have relevant experience—as is the case on many environmental issues—the FCO(and other government departments) should make sure that their contributions are welcomed, and early, towardspolicy development and implementation.

Detail

1. The UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum (UKOTCF or the Forum) promotes the conservation ofbiodiversity, ecosystem services, and their contribution, together with other aspects of natural and humanheritage, to the well-being and sustainability of the UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs). Member organisationsinclude leading environmental bodies in the UK, the UKOTs, and the Crown Dependencies (CDs). The last(the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) share many conservation challenges and aspects of governance withthe UKOTs, including reliance on HMG to represent their interests internationally, under internationalconventions, including Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), and in related negotiations. UKOTCFand associated organisations have given evidence to earlier inquiries by the FAC and other select committeesin relation to the fulfilment of the UK’s responsibilities in respect of the UKOTs.

2. This submission relates primarily to the UK’s overseas territories for two reasons. First, that is in linewith our priorities. Secondly, the FCO leads within government on policy concerning the overseas territories.The forthcoming White Paper on the overseas territories will be drafted by FCO officials and approved byFCO ministers, as was the 1999 White Paper—with, of course, contributions from and agreement by othergovernment departments. We would hope that the Committee would accept that there should be no dilution ofpolicy within the 1999 White Paper, nor from the specific commitments on the UKOTs made in the 2006White Paper on the UK’s foreign policy. A case can perhaps be made for a different institutional structure. Theoverseas territories are not foreign and—as with other sub-national jurisdictions (the devolved administrationsand the Crown Dependencies)—voters at these sub-national levels of government remain British citizens.However, this inquiry concerns the current responsibilities of the FCO. Precisely because they are not foreigncountries, the overseas territories are sometimes not given the attention they deserve. That said, we are greatlyencouraged by the importance which current FCO ministers attach to the territories—evident in that twoterritories have already been visited by Mr Bellingham; through recent speeches; and by the fact that theterritories are listed as one of the FAC’s priority issues. We hope this will be reflected in your report.

What is the FCO’s role in UK Government?

3. The FCO has three inter-related roles. The first is making policy in areas where it has the lead role. Thesecond is its coordinating role, where other departments often have the primary input on policy, but wherethere are overseas bilateral, regional or international dimensions that need to be taken into account. Third, theFCO has a managerial role in staffing and managing our network of overseas posts (including in the UKOTs)and in using them to communicate with other governments and overseas or international governments andother organisations.

4. Under present arrangements, the FCO is the lead department in Whitehall for the UKOTs. That meansthat, in relation to the UK Parliament and to the international community, the FCO is responsible for the goodgovernance of the territories. However, most territories have their own locally elected governments, so adelicate balance has to be struck between respecting the autonomy of the territories and making sure that



appropriate standards are observed in such areas as public security, the integrity of public administration andjustice. The responsibilities of governors of overseas territories are not easy because they need to communicateto the people and government of the territory the policies and concerns of UK ministers and officials wherethese affect the territory; but they also have to make sure that ministers and officials in Whitehall are aware oflocal concerns.

5. Policy areas where the FCO has the lead include such fundamental issues as constitutional reform, andthe appointment of governors and their staff. However, many areas can impact on overseas territories wherethe lead and the expertise lie elsewhere: offshore finance, international transport, international trade, climatechange, defence, physical planning, education in the UK, nationality. Here the crucial role of the FCO is acoordinating one, to make sure that the interests of the UKOTs are taken into account. That means makingsure that other government departments are aware, for example, that international agreements may affect theUKOTs as well as the metropolitan UK. One area of direct interest to UKOTCF is multilateral environmentalagreements. Here the lead department is usually Defra but, even here, there is not one single division withresponsibility as, for example, marine and fisheries are dealt with by different officials than those that deal ingeneral with the MEAs. Because of the rich biodiversity of the UKOTs (comparatively much richer than inmetropolitan UK), there is often much directly relevant experience in NGOs, both in the territories and in theUK. However, there is also a crucial issue of resources, both human and financial, for good environmentalgovernance in the territories. The territories are often small in population and remote. Many of the areas richestin biodiversity are islands that have no permanent resident population but where the threats to biodiversitystem from historic damage to the environment, often through invasive alien species: goats, rats, even reindeerin South Georgia, and several plants species. Support from the UK is essential, and the FCO thus has a dualrole both in providing support and in making sure that appropriate support is provided by other governmentdepartments and by collaboration with NGOs.

6. A historic example of the complexity of the FCO’s role in respect of the overseas territories in workingwith other government departments and with NGOs is provided by the proposal made in 1998 by a UScompany, Beal Aerospace, to construct a satellite launch station on Sombrero, an uninhabited island in theCaribbean overseas territory of Anguilla.

7. First, the Governor needed to advise FCO of the proposal, which had been made directly to theGovernment of Anguilla (GOA); and to ask that the FCO make expert advice available. Much of that wentbeyond the competence of FCO officials. Other departments had to be consulted on international agreementson space, on international transport, on trade, on biodiversity and on planning. The government of Anguillaasked the FCO to arrange for the UK Planning Inspectorate to help it organize a public consultation on theproposal and on the Environmental Impact Assessment prepared by consultants for Beal Aerospace. There wasa major NGO contribution involving several UKOTCF members, as independent evidence was needed aboutthe island’s unique ecosystem. The FCO also had to handle lobbying from the company and from the USgovernment.

8. The main lesson from this example is that the FCO can best support the overseas territories when it usesits power of convocation to draw in outside expertise as early as possible, including other departments andcivil society.

How should the Foreign Secretary’s claim to be putting the FCO “back where it belongs at the centre ofGovernment” be assessed?

9. In relation to the Overseas Territories, the FCO should be assessed in terms of its active engagement withother government departments and with civil society. The existence of the overseas territories and theirdistinctive contributions to the extended British family is not well understood, either by officials or by civilsociety throughout the UK. The FCO needs to develop a more active role in explaining that part of Britain’shuman and constitutional diversity lies in these territories beyond our shores, but within the extended Britishfamily.

Could the FCO better organise and utilise its financial and human resources so as to fulfil its role?

10. In relation to the Overseas Territories, one way government as a whole could better organise resources,with the FCO taking a leading role, would be by encouraging secondments between departments and thegovernments of overseas territories (especially, but not only, governors’ offices). That would give territoriesthe benefit of wider Whitehall expertise than just that developed in the FCO; and over time it might help tobuild up a greater appreciation in other Whitehall departments of the distinctive features of life for fellowBritish citizens in the overseas territories.

11. The most important task, however, is for the FCO and other departments to work with the overseasterritories to make sure that there are local structural checks and balances to support good governance—andthat these work effectively, with adequate resources. Small territories are often like towns or villages: all thepolitical players know each other and many are inter-related by family or business relationships. This can meanundue personal influence in such areas of life as access to information, planning permission and the operationof an independent judicial system.



12. In part, the position of the Governor’s whole role is very different from that of an Ambassador byproviding a constitutional guarantee of the UK’s ability to intervene when that is necessary to ensure goodgovernance. Nevertheless—as has been seen in the current example of the Turks and Caicos Islands—needingto invoke the constitutional authority of the governor to intervene is likely to be a sign that things have gonebadly wrong at much earlier stages. It is not for the UKOTCF to offer views here on any specific territory. Butin such areas as freedom of information, access to an Ombudsman (or comparable independent authoritiesguards against maladministration) and provision for independent review of major planning and financialdecisions, it is far better for the citizens of the overseas territories that there are appropriate structures in placeto enable them to hold elected and unelected officials to account. To rely too far on governors, who are, afterall, generally “birds of passage”, to guarantee good governance of the overseas territories is unrealistic.Governors should be seen primarily as helping the FCO to ensure that the interests of the territories areappreciated throughout HMG and civil society in the UK; and to protect the territories’ interests internationally.Good governance should generally be assured for the citizens of the overseas territories through localdemocratic institutions working within adequate local checks and balances, with the FCO monitoring actively.

How does the FCO work across Whitehall? Are the FCO and its resources organised so as to facilitatecross-Government cooperation?

13. How the FCO works across Whitehall is partly for it to explain in ways which encourage clarity in howits ministers and officials understand their own role. One way to do this (which relates also to the first twoheadings) would be to identify areas where effective cooperation with overseas countries, bilaterally, regionallyand within international organizations, is important for securing HMG’s policy objectives; and identifying theways in which ministers, senior officials and desk-officers (including in overseas posts) coordinate their work.At the simplest level, this may simply mean making sure that relevant officials in other government departmentsare kept in the picture. However, the civil service, and indeed coordination in general, needs leadership, soeffective joined-up government is only likely when there is meaningful contact between ministers, not justofficials, when policy implications cross departmental boundaries. Any interdepartmental working groupsestablished, whether at ministerial or official level, should actually meet and function on a regular basis.

What should be the role of the FCO’s network of overseas posts?

14. Their role should be to support and serve all UK citizens, their governments, their civil institutions andcommercial companies. They should do this, of course, for those who have good reason to call on their services.Governments is plural because while it will often be the FCO and other central government departments thatinform posts of personal and institutional interests that may need their support, these interests may often bestbe defined by other levels of government, including those in the overseas territories as well as the devolvedadministrations and the Crown Dependencies.

What is the FCO’s role in explaining UK foreign policy to the British public?

15. The role is not just to explain foreign policy, but to relate it to other policy areas and to show how theyare interrelated. Classic examples are defence, trade, international development, global environmental issues,conflict prevention and resolution. As far as environmental issues are concerned, the FCO has sensibly retaineda key role in climate change but now takes a far less direct interest in the loss of global diversity andenvironmental degradation, especially of the marine environment, with the single exception of polar regions(because of the UK’s territorial stake in Antarctica and in the Antarctic treaty system). While it is right thatthe lead on specific international issues such as policy within the Convention on Biological Diversity shouldlie with Defra, the FCO needs to retain an active interest and engagement. The greatest stake that Britain hasin both global biodiversity and in the marine environment is one where the overall lead lies with the FCO: theoverseas territories.

What should be the FCO’s role in relation to non-governmental organisations?

16. The FCO has generally shown an awareness of the importance of NGOs in public life in Britain.UKOTCF has experienced a good spirit of cooperation in the past with the FCO, which had waned a little inrecent times, but is now building once more, and we very much hope it continues to do so—and certainly theForum will play its part. What matters above all is that consultation is part of a natural working pattern, ratherthan just when governments feel the need to demonstrate that consultation has taken place. There can be atendency, when an issue has any degree of sensitivity, for different government departments to get together todecide what their position will be, before engaging with NGOs. That is not the best way to benefit from thedifferent perspective which NGOs can often provide; and which can help governments to avoid mistakes. Aclassic illustration of this has been the derivation of the UK Government’s rather deficient “UK OverseasTerritories’ Biodiversity Strategy”. This document was agreed by Defra, DFID, FCO and JNCC, but receivedno input from NGOs, private sector or scientific institutions—all of which are listed, rather ironically, in theMinister’s foreword as a prerequisite for success.



Given the new Government’s emphasis on using the FCO to promote UK trade and economic recovery, howcan the Department best avoid potential conflicts between this task, support for human rights, and the pursuitof other Government objectives?

17. This question has perhaps limited application to environmental issues in the overseas territories. However,respect for the human rights of those who are UK citizens by virtue of their being associated with a UKoverseas territory is fundamental to the credibility of the FCO in promoting good governance internationallyand human rights, as well as good fiscal and environmental governance.

3 December 2010

Written evidence from the Society for Italian Studies

1. On behalf of the Society for Italian Studies (SIS), we would like to submit the following considerationsto the Inquiry on the Role of the FCO in UK Government.

2. The Society for Italian Studies is the UK’s national subject association for Italian studies, bringing togethercolleagues working in universities across the country.

3. In response to the Committee’s request for “submissions which address, in particular, ... the FCO’s rolein the management and implementation of EU business for the UK Government”, we would like to point outthe urgency of ensuring that a sustainable stream of graduates in European languages continues to flow fromour universities. The SIS would like to highlight the danger to a number of modern languages departments inthe UK, and to suggest that the FCO helps ensure that the strategic importance of modern languages—fornational economic and political success—become a key consideration for government policy.

4. The SIS would like to point out that recent speeches and comments by the Foreign Secretary on theimportance of UK citizens gaining positions of influence within EU institutions does not yet appear to haveinfluenced government higher education policy; there is little evidence of the strategic importance of Europeanlanguages being reflected in government plans for HE.

3 December 2010

Written evidence from Anthony Aust

General point: it would be a mistake to appoint businessmen as British ambassadors

My Experience

1. I was for 25 years a Legal Adviser in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), retiring in 2002 asDeputy Legal Adviser. I read law at the London School of Economics (LSE), became a solicitor and thenjoined the FCO. Throughout my career, I gave legal advice to FCO departments. Before and since I retired, Ihave taught international law as a visiting professor at University College London, the School of Oriental andAfrican Studies (SOAS), LSE, Westminster University and Notre Dame (London). I have also taught and givenseminars at other universities and other places in the United Kingdom and abroad: see the attached (and rathershort) CV.

2. During my time in the FCO, I got to know well those who I advised and their particular concerns andhow they operate. Like any lawyer, one has to know all the relevant facts of any case and appreciate thepressures on the client, which in this case was principally the department and the Foreign Secretary or a juniorFCO minister. This was exemplified by the Lockerbie affair. By this I mean not only the criminal case, butalso the case brought by Libya against the United Kingdom and the United States at the International Court ofJustice (ICJ), and the need to get the backing of the UN Security Council for what we wished to do in bothwith the criminal case and at the ICJ.

3. I was posted abroad twice for three years each time: West Berlin 1976–79 and as a Legal Adviser to theUK Mission (ie British Embassy) to the United Nations in New York in 1988–91.

4. Each FCO department has one or more legal advisers, and usually one has at least four departments toadvise at any one time. Each year one may drop one department and be assigned another to advise. Sometimes,one may advise a department for much longer, so providing much needed continuity. Nevertheless, duringone’s career, one will advise most departments. This gives one an understanding of each department’s concerns.Although one is not responsible for the policy adopted by a department you advise, one is a full member ofthe FCO and soon learns of the problems facing the department.

5. As an FCO Legal Adviser, I worked closely with the members of the departments that I advised. Usually,they were not legally qualified persons although they were generally well aware of the problem facing themand usually understood very well my legal advice. In this, like most of my colleagues, I was at pains to makethe advice understandable to a layperson. There is no point in writing as one would to another lawyer if thelayperson would not understand the advice. I therefore experienced few problems, and was glad that I did not



have to advise ministers on difficult policy problems, merely on the legal aspects of the problem. However,given my experience, from time to time I was able to suggest a practical way out of a policy quandary.

6. Knowing the diplomatic and political pressures (both on the UK Government and other relevantgovernments) is especially important for matters coming before the United Nations. When I was Legal Adviserto the UK Mission to the United Nations, the time was particularly important since I saw at first hand theeffect of the end of the Cold War on the policy of East European Governments. When I left the post in August1991, I became, inter alia, Legal Adviser to the FCO’s UN Department, where I saw from the perspective ofthe FCO the break-up of Yugoslavia, and continued to monitor the doings of the UN Security Council.

Views

7. Working so closely with non-lawyers, I got to know well the subject they were concerned with and wasimpressed by the way they tackled it. Despite the changes in nomenclature—borrowed chiefly from the Cityand large companies—the way the FCO operates has not essentially changed. It has to take into account theviews of other governments and seek to find a way which protects British interests and, if necessary, those ofour allies. That task is far from easy, but it is the essence of the task of any foreign ministry. Putting it moresimply, it is (generally) being nice to foreigners in order to get our way. This is now more difficult since weare no longer a Great Power either military or economically, and our empire had shrivelled to a handful ofgenerally poor and troublesome overseas territories. Yet, we are judged by the effectiveness of our diplomacy.In other words, are we to be taken seriously?

8. Based on my long experience of working with the FCO, I believe that nothing substantive needs to bechanged in the way it works. Despite alterations in nomenclature (for example an Under-Secretary becominga Director), which may be understandable, the challenges facing the FCO and its diplomats remain essentiallythe same. That is knowledge of the local language; the local ways of doing business; and the concerns of theforeign country.

Local language

9. It would be a big mistake to think that because English has now replaced French as the “internationallanguage”, and so is widely understood and spoken, and that a British diplomat can get by speaking only ormainly English. Although his opposite numbers may understand and speak English apparently fluently, it isnot usually their language. Thus, serious mistakes and misunderstandings can occur if one does not know thelocal language well. Therefore, to be truly influential with members of a foreign government and their officials(and to report back accurately), one must be able to speak and understand their language well. It wouldtherefore be a mistake to recruit most businessmen as diplomats, even as ambassadors. They are unlikely toknow well enough the country, its concerns or its people. Their skills (even if otherwise considerable) aredifferent to that of diplomats.

10. The US practice of appointing as ambassadors many non-diplomats (such as businessmen) is not a paththe United Kingdom should follow. What is done in the United States is very different. Each Presidentialelection is most expensive and if their candidate is successful, many large donors expect to be appointed asambassadors. In fact, those so appointed usually only host meals and cocktail parties and give set speeches;most of the real work of the embassy being done by their deputy, who is a full and experienced member ofthe US Foreign Service.

Ways of doing business

11. Even European businessmen do business in ways that are not ours; this applies even to what we regardas our closest neighbours. It would therefore be a mistake to appoint businessmen as ambassadors unless theyare very aware what really matters to the businessmen they have to deal with, as well as speaking andunderstanding their language very well. Today, their concerns are often related to foreign policy.

Concerns of the foreign country

12. Political concerns will also influence foreign businessmen when dealing with the United Kingdom. Thesewill be truly understood only by UK diplomats who live among them and speak their language. The Britishambassador may be given false encouragement, though he should understand this. A businessman ambassadormay not be so lucky.

CV

13. I advised FCO ministers, officials and other government departments on public international law,constitutional law and UK law. I acquired an in-depth knowledge of most areas of international law, includingthe law of treaties, international civil aviation, diplomatic privileges and immunities, counter-terrorism, disputesettlement, Antarctica and defence. I had over 10 years close involvement in UN legal affairs in New Yorkand London. I am experienced in drafting treaties, constitutions and legislation.

14. Now I am a consultant on public international law and constitutional law to British ministries (eg FCO,DfID and Defra), other Commonwealth and foreign governments, international organisations and law firms in



London and abroad. I have been the Deputy Director and a Visiting Fellow of the British Institute ofInternational and Comparative Law. I have been a visiting professor at the London School of Economics (LSE),University College, London (UCL) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). I have alsotaught elsewhere.

15. Cambridge University Press published my Modern Treaty Law and Practice, (2nd edn 2007; Chineseedn, 2004); and my Handbook of International Law (2nd edn 2010). I also write on international law forchapters in edited books and in articles for learned journals.

10 December 2010

Written submission from Oliver Miles CMG

1. For reasons of geography and history as well as because of our trading economy, international factorsweigh larger in Britain than in other countries of comparable wealth and size (excepting France, which iscomparable with Britain). This rather than any political will to punch above our weight accounts for thetraditional political clout of the Foreign Office within government, and for the development of a DiplomaticService which outclasses those of other European states and is a match for those of larger nations such as theUSA, Russia and China.

2. These assets are needed to minimise the negative consequences of international events which by theirnature are outside our control, such as the development of Soviet power in the 20th century or of Islamicextremist violence in the 21st, and also to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. Most of the foreignpolicy disasters of the last hundred years—Munich, Suez, Iraq—are exceptions that prove the rule: the PrimeMinisters of the day deliberately bypassed the Foreign Office, and in the Iraq case we had not had an embassythere since 1991. We were slow to grasp the opportunities created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but thatwas mainly because the government, led by the Treasury, refused to accept that we could not do so withoutmodest additional resources required to open posts in the “new” capitals. This was the background to theunhappy story of the Tashkent embassy seven or eight years ago.

3. The Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service have therefore a vital national and indeed internationalrole, since most big international problems require us to work with allies. If our institutions are strong theycan exercise a powerful influence within the British government and within our alliances. “Strong” in thiscontext means that they must have deep understanding of the issues, and ability to formulate policy andnegotiate effectively. In most of the international crises in which I was personally involved, Aden, Cyprus,Arab/Israel and Libya, the Foreign Office commanded confidence because of its professional understanding ofthe issues and knowledge of the personalities and history behind the events of the day.

4. The exception was Yugoslavia. For the first time, taking part in policy discussions at prime ministeriallevel, I felt that we were exposed by our lack of expertise. There were two reasons: first, the collapse ofYugoslavia was unexpected, and to understand it required knowledge of factors which had been largelyinvisible, though latent, for more than a generation. But this was made worse by our failure to mobilise suchexpertise as we did have. This can be attributed at least in part to concentration on process and managementat the cost of neglect of our fundamental role.

5. By the time I retired from the service in 1996 I felt (and I said as much to the then head of the DiplomaticService) that we had compromised our traditional position of strength by allowing deep understanding of theworld outside Britain to be sacrificed in favour of peripheral objectives. A symbol and more than a symbol ofthis is the fact that in the region I know best, the Arab world, too many key positions at home and abroad arenow occupied by non-Arabic speakers. This is sometimes unavoidable, but it is nonetheless deplorable. Nothingmore clearly indicates the professionalism of our Diplomatic Service compared with others than our ability towork in “difficult” languages.

6. One problem is that performance measurement, which has been imported from the private sector into thecivil service including the foreign service over the last 25 years, is not applicable to all the work of the FCOand the Diplomatic Service. Indeed the attempt to apply it can have a distorting effect. Money is measurable,passports, visas, prison visits, entertainment, trade are all measurable. But the value of an export promotionexercise cannot easily be measured, and much political work cannot be sensibly measured at all. How to counthow many times diplomatic action has prevented or contributed to ending a war, perhaps the highest functionof political diplomacy? Distortion arises because activities that can be measured come to be regarded as moreimportant than those that cannot, often the reverse of the truth.

7. To me the most shocking piece of evidence given to the Iraq enquiry was the statement by Sir JohnSawers that “Very few observers actually highlighted the scale of the violence that we could face. I think aboutthe only person in my recollection who got it right was President Mubarak.” He described the level of violencethat we encountered as “unprecedented”. These comments indicate a failure by the FCO in its most essentialfunction: to convey to No. 10 and the Cabinet an appreciation of reality which was shared by pretty welleveryone with knowledge of Iraq. As for “unprecedented” one has only to think of the extreme violenceassociated with the 40 years of the British period in Iraq from World War I to the1958 revolution from startto finish.



8. Radical reconsideration of objectives is required: less emphasis on presentation, image, process, diversity,management, more on the core strength of the FCO and the Diplomatic Service. Just one Alice in Wonderlandexample: the major functions of the consular and protocol departments are protection of British subjects andconduct of relations with foreign embassies in London, so why is the official who supervises them entitled“Director General of Change”? There should be more area and language studies, greater specialisation of someofficers without detriment to careers, full use of research and analysis resources, continued or enhanced co-operation with outside bodies such as think tanks and universities. This is not to belittle the requirement, inthe Diplomatic Service as in the Home Civil Service, for the experienced professional generalist.

9. The channel through which advice and information goes from the FCO and the Diplomatic Service to No.10 and the Cabinet, and policy decisions and instructions come back, needs attention. Perhaps because of theThatcher/Charles Powell phenomenon this function is now mainly performed by the private offices, which areessential and efficient but not robust enough to carry the weight. Papers for Cabinet may no longer be anadequate option, for reasons outside the remit of your committee; many with government service experiencewill regret the decline of collegiate government, with the Foreign Secretary and the FCO and DiplomaticService playing a full part in policy making at the appropriate levels including Cabinet. Let us hope theNational Security Council experiment will provide an answer.

10. Heads of mission are held strictly to account in some secondary areas, including in particular finance(where the formal requirements placed on them are unrealistic). More attention should be given to holdingthem to account on policy issues. For example, when WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered and I had to breakoff relations with Libya, apart from half an hour with the Prime Minister (when rather surprisingly she didmost of the listening) I do not recall being asked difficult questions: did I foresee it? If not, why not? Whatdid I do, or recommend London should do, to avoid it? What lessons could be learned? Dialogue between theFCO and heads of mission should routinely include re-examination of opportunities and threats.

11. Some British ambassadors were advised during the Blair years that it was not worth makingrecommendations which were contrary to established policy. This is a betrayal of the professionalism of theDiplomatic Service, with grave dangers for the national interest. The American foreign service has been widelypraised for the quality of reporting revealed by WikiLeaks, but not much independence of mind has been inevidence. It is essential that heads of mission should feel free to submit reports and recommendations whichare out of line with current policy. Political advisers and political appointments have a proper role, but theymust not tarnish the political impartiality of the Diplomatic Service. It is galling when the mistakes of politicalimplants, often highly paid, are attributed to the Service. An example is the drafting of the “dodgy dossier” ongoing to war in Iraq.

12. Support for British business, which the Prime Minister has emphasised, is part of a broader picture. Toquote the 1969 Duncan report on overseas representation “The commercial work of the Diplomatic Servicecannot have absolute priority, since the preservation of peace and security must clearly be an overriding aim”but “in our present circumstances [economic crises are always with us, 1969 no exception] ...export promotionis bound to become an even more crucial part of overseas representational work”. Probably the most usefulthing an ambassador can do for business is to advise how decisions are made and who makes them. Goodadvice, both to ministers and to businessmen, depends on getting to know and if possible understand the cultureand motivation of the country or institution in which you work, what makes the people as well as theirgovernment tick. Modern communications and the ease of travel enable ministers to meet and get to knowtheir foreign colleagues, and that can be invaluable, but such acquaintances and flying visits only scratch thesurface of the knowledge of foreign countries.

27 December 2010

Written evidence from Sir Michael Wood KCMG17

Summary

(i) This submission concerns the FCO’s role within Government in the legal field. That includes publicinternational law (such as the law on the use of force, the law of armed conflict, international humanrights law, and international criminal law), EU law, the law of British overseas territories, and UKlaw in so far as it concerns international relations.

(ii) The role of law in international affairs has greatly expanded in recent times, with globalisation andemphasis on a rules-based international system, the enhanced role of international and domestic courtsin the field of international relations, together with new developments such as the internationalcriminal tribunals.

(iii) Upholding the rule of law in international affairs is an important policy objective of the UKGovernment. Doing so contributes both to stability in the world (and thus among other things to theGovernment’s defence and security policies), as well as to the Government’s influence internationally.

(iv) The FCO has a key role within Government in ensuring both that the UK Government itself conforms17 Legal Adviser to the FCO 1999–2006.



to international law, and that the UK Government promotes the rule of law internationally, byencouraging States to respect international law and by contributing to its sound development.

(v) In the achievement of these objectives, the FCO’s legal team plays a central role in ensuring thatGovernment as a whole has the necessary specialist legal advice and experience.

(vi) They do this by participating actively within the FCO, and more widely in Government, in thedevelopment and presentation of policy. They represent the UK internationally, in multilateral andbilateral negotiations involving legal questions, including within the UN and EU. And by acting asAgent and Counsel they ensure the proper conduct of international litigation in which the UK isinvolved (for example, before the International Court of Justice and the European Court of HumanRights).

Detail

The importance of the rule of law in international affairs

1. Upholding the rule of law in international affairs is an important policy objective of the UK Government.The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs addressed this in a speech at Lincoln’s Inn on15 September 2010.18 He stressed the need “to strengthen a rules-based international system based on ourvalues”, and explained that the Government saw human rights and upholding international law “as essential toand indivisible from our foreign policy objectives.” He continued,

“our interests depend on a world system based on law. We need states not to proliferate nuclear weapons,to respect the sovereignty of others, to abide by international treaties and to support legal sanctions by theinternational community.”

The Foreign Secretary added that “[o]ur standing is directly linked to the belief of others that we will dowhat we say and that we will not apply double standards.”

2. In short, upholding the rule of law internationally contributes both to stability in the world (and thus amongother things to the Government’s defence and security policies), as well as to its influence internationally.

The FCO legal team and their work

3. The FCO legal advisory team comprises around 65 London-based staff, of whom around half are lawyers,plus a further 10 or so lawyers on secondment to other government departments or on postings abroad,including at the UK Missions in New York and Geneva, in Brussels, The Hague and elsewhere. As had beenthe case for many years, a senior FCO lawyer is seconded to the Attorney General’s Office.19

4. This pattern varies from time to time. For example, for some years after 2003, an FCO lawyer was postedin Baghdad, initially working with ORHA/CPA and the UK Representative in Baghdad, then at the BritishEmbassy. Members of FCO Legal Advisers are from time to time seconded to other organizations, or to policyjobs within the Diplomatic Service, for example as External Relations (RELEX) Counsellor at UKRep Brussels.

5. The FCO Legal Advisers are members of HM Diplomatic Service, with the obligations (as to postingsetc) that go with that position. They work on the whole range of legal matters relevant to the FCO. Theseinclude in particular questions of public international law, on which FCO lawyers assist other governmentdepartments, including on the law of armed conflict (international humanitarian law) and international humanrights law. FCO legal work also covers a wide range of other areas that impacts on foreign policy, includingEuropean Union law; the constitutional and other law of the British overseas territories; and UK law in so faras it relates to international relations as well as to the FCO itself (such as employment law, data protection,freedom of information, the intelligence and security services).

6. The range and emphasis of the legal work within the FCO varies over time, in light of current problems.Since 9/11 there has naturally been an even greater emphasis than previously on legal aspects of counter-terrorism, within the UN, Council of Europe and EU, as well as in bilateral relations (diplomatic assurancesetc), and on use of force issues (Afghanistan; Iraq).

7. Legal advice on matters of public international law is given within the FCO and to other governmentdepartments, and is fully integrated into the development of policy. Any policy submission within the FCOraising legal issues will be based on, and where necessary include, legal advice. Much advice is given in thecourse of meetings with Ministers and officials. Most important papers within the FCO are copied to LegalAdvisers, which enables them to volunteer advice where necessary, without waiting to be asked.18 “Britain’s values in a networked world”,

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=2286440519 There is a considerable literature on the role of FCO Legal Advisers, including F. Berman, “The Role of the International

Lawyer in the Making of Foreign Policy”, in C. Wickremasinghe (ed.), The International Lawyer as Practitioner. (BIICL 2000);A. Watts, “International Law and International Relations: UK Practice” (1991) 2 EJIL 157–164; I. Sinclair, “The Practice ofInternational Law: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office”, in Bin Cheng (ed.) International Law Teaching and Practice.(Stevens, 1982).



Comparison with other countries

8. States have different traditions in the organization and functions of their government legal advisers in thefield of public international law, based on three principal models.20 Some combine elements of each.

9. First, there is the system, as in the UK and the USA, where the lawyers in the office of the legal adviserat the foreign ministry are all professionally qualified lawyers, whose foreign ministry career is wholly orlargely spent within the legal office rather than on regular diplomatic assignments. They are continuouslyinvolved in policy formulation, and in some fields have direct responsibility for policy, such as in treatymatters and the law of the sea, and when on an overseas posting or as head or member of a delegation to aninternational meeting.

10. Second, there is the system, as in Germany, where the legal adviser’s office consists of regular diplomatswith some legal background or professional legal training.

11. Third, in some countries the foreign ministry receives legal advice mainly from outside sources, typicallyfrom an Attorney General’s Office. This is the position, for example, in Cyprus, Malaysia, Malta and Singapore,and to some extent Australia.

The FCO and other parts of government

12. FCO Legal Advisers work closely with the lawyers, officials and sometimes Ministers in othergovernment departments. They work closely, as necessary, with various parts of the Cabinet Office, as well aswith the Treasury Solicitor. Officials from the Prime Minister’s Office, and occasionally the Prime Minister,may sometime consult them directly where a matter is delicate or urgent (for example, in the preparationof PMQs).

13. This is so at the stage of policy formulation, the drafting of legislation, and in connection with domesticand international litigation involving the FCO and its agencies or important questions of public internationallaw.

14. The relationship with both the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office is particularly close, and acrossa wide range of issues. As regards the MOD, these include the right to use force abroad (self-defence, SecurityCouncil authorization, rescue of nationals, to avert an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe); the applicationof the Geneva Conventions and other laws of armed conflict; the application of human rights obligations toBritish armed forces overseas. As regards the Home Office, these include the full range of issues arising onthe counter-terrorism agenda, as well as in respect of international human rights and refugee issues. TheAttorney General will often be involved in such matters.

15. FCO Legal Advisers are heavily engaged in matters concerning the United Nations and otherinternational organizations, which often have cross-departmental implications. An example is UN and EUsanctions matters, where they are involved both at the stage of the adoption of the Security Council resolution/EU common position, and at the stage of drafting the necessary implementing legislation. This is an area whichhas seen a great increase in cases before the English and European courts, cases involving a large number ofgovernment departments and agencies.

16. In respect of EU law, the FCO has a leading role when it come to drawing up new treaties (such as theLisbon Treaty), on legislation (for example, the current European Union Bill) and on institutional mattersgenerally.

17. FCO Legal Advisers act as Agent (HMG’s representative) in cases involving HMG before internationalcourts and tribunals, regardless of which government department is most directly implicated. This includescases before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (but not the European Court of Justice inLuxembourg). Examples include the Lockerbie and Kosovo cases before the International Court of Justice inThe Hague; the MOX Plant cases before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg and aninternational arbitral tribunal. The FCO itself is increasingly involved, directly or indirectly, in litigation, beforethe English courts as well as before European and international courts and tribunals.

The FCO and the Attorney General

18. The close relationship between FCO lawyers and the Attorney General and his Office is an importantpart of the machinery of government for ensuring that the United Kingdom complies with its legal obligations,including those under public international law. The Attorney General’s support for the FCO lawyers, and theirassistance to him, are key parts of this relationship.

Recommendations

19. It is difficult to make specific recommendations without knowing the broad thrust of the Committee’sInquiry, and the degree of detail to be included in the Committee’s report.20 See the Council of Europe’s “Database on the Office of the Legal Adviser of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”:

http://www.coe.int/t/e/legal_affairs/legal_co-operation/public_international_law/Office_of_Legal_Affairs/default.asp#TopOfPage.



20. Subject to this caveat, it is suggested that the Committee may wish to acknowledge in its report theFCO’s central role within Government as regards the legal aspects of international relations. The Committeemight also note in this connection the key importance of the relationship between the FCO (and its LegalAdvisers) and the Attorney General, who is the Government’s principal legal adviser, including on questionsof public international law.

4 January 2011

Written evidence from Sir John Graham GCMG

I have seen the submission to your Committee by Mr Oliver Miles. I write to support the case he makes. Iserved for 36 years from 1950 in the Foreign, later the Diplomatic, Service and my career included ambassadorto Iraq 1974–77, ambassador to Iran 1979–80 and Permanent Representative on the North Atlantic Council1982–86. I am therefore no doubt biased.

The fundamental role of the FCO is to contribute to the development and implementation of policy, so that,where it may affect other countries, the likely reactions of and impact on those countries are taken into account.This also gives the implementation of policy the best chance of success. Equally importantly, the role mustinclude the formulation, in conjunction with other relevant departments and subject to ministerial guidance andapproval, of an overall strategy embracing Britain’s national objectives and place in the world.

For these purposes it depends on the analysis and reports of staff serving in posts abroad whose primarytask is to get to know and if possible understand the culture and motivation of the country, both the peopleand the government, or institution in which they work. Knowledge of the local language is obviously aconsiderable help in this. Some of our biggest disasters stem from the failure to take account of likelyreactions—Suez in 1956 for example when the reaction of the US and in the Arab world to the Franco-Israeli-British operation, concocted without the participation of the normal apparatus of the Foreign Office or theembassies in the area, was so badly misread.

Commercial work, trade promotion and consular work are important but secondary to the primary tasks. Inmy experience senior business executives want advice on the nature of the country with which they are seekingto trade, including whether the government will survive and pay its bills. Such advice can only be based on anunderstanding of the country concerned.

Linked to this is the importance of ambassadors and other staff being able to speak and write with candour,even if their views are out of line with established policy. The reported recent ban under the previous Foreignand Commonwealth Secretary on so-called valedictory despatches, or whatever new form of formalcommunication might replace them, is a deplorable attempt to restrict such freedom of speech.

4 January 2011

Written evidence from Sir David Logan KCMG

The Author

I was a member of the Diplomatic Service from 1965–2001. For most of my career I specialised in east-west relations and in defence policy. My postings in the FCO included appointments as Assistant UnderSecretary of State for Central and Eastern European Affairs and Assistant Under Secretary of State for DefencePolicy. Abroad, I was Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassies in Moscow and Washington in the 1990s andAmbassador to Turkey from 1997–2001 (having previously served in the political section of the Embassy therein the 60s). I retired early and became Director of the Centre for Studies in Security and Diplomacy atBirmingham University between 2002–07. I now chair the British Institute at Ankara and retain other interestsin Russia and Turkey.

Summary of Evidence— This evidence is narrowly confined to two issues. What are the distinctive capabilities needed to

give the Diplomatic Service (DS) comparative advantage for the promotion of UK interests? Howshould it sustain this advantage in an era of financial stringency?

— What distinguishes the DS both from its foreign peers and from other UK government departmentsis superior expertise in foreign countries and regions, and the resources to exploit this effectivelyon behalf of British interests. “Abroad” is the DS’s USP.21

— In an increasingly competitive world, the DS must more than match the capacity of its peers (theFrench and German diplomatic services for example) to operate on behalf of the national interest.

— For its staff, this means the acquisition and exploitation of regional and country expertise, highstandard language skills, and the familiarity and contacts needed to give access and influence. Thesame standards are required for staffing missions to multilateral institutions (eg the EU and UN).

21 Unique Selling Point.



— Cuts must not result in a weakening of the FCO’s USP. Institutionally, this means maintaining theresources and structures which enable the DS to match its peers abroad, and to be the authoritativevoice on issues at home within its remit in the policy framework established by the NationalSecurity Strategy. For its staff, it means postings in the FCO and abroad which generate realexpertise, as well as language training. Career planning should be undertaken and systematicallyimplemented with the same objective.

— Particularly in current economic circumstances, the DS should maintain this focus rather thandevote large resources to generic expertise (the environment, human rights etc) where it needs tobe an informed interlocutor rather than a policy-maker.

— Maintenance of the FCO’s capabilities also requires that its Research Analysts continue to operateas an effective but distinctive contributor to the FCO’s product, and are not reduced to becomingsimply assistants to main-stream policy-makers.

— Budget cuts should not result in relentless salami slicing, with a comprehensive array of postsmaintained but at wafer-thin level. Forced to choose, it is better to have effective posts in placesof importance to HMG than to keep the flag flying everywhere.

Detail

1. The Committee’s enquiry is far-ranging. However, I focus on only two issues in this submission, namelythe distinctive role of the FCO in British policy-making (in contemporary jargon, its USP) and how it shouldhandle its human resources in an era of financial retrenchment.

What the FCO is for…..

2. The exact role of the Diplomatic Service has long been an issue. The Berrill Report of 1977 effectivelyconcluded that the diplomats provided no added value and that they should be replaced by officials drawn fromthe Whitehall departments who had relevant expertise on the range of international questions (defence,economics, energy etc) on which the UK needed to deal with foreign governments. This recommendation ofthe CPRS report was not implemented. However, its challenge to the notion of a distinctive role for diplomatsfocussed attention, and remains the key question which any enquiry into the role of the FCO has to answer.

3. The DS’s USP is its foreign policy professionalism. The promotion of the UK’s overseas interests requirethe government to have available to it the best possible expertise on international developments as well as onthe interests and policies of other nations. We need the capacity to respond to the former and to influence thelatter in an unpredictable and often threatening international environment. In a highly competitive world inwhich the UK enjoys few natural advantages, our diplomacy plays a key role for the protection and promotionof a wide range of our interests at extraordinarily modest cost.

4. The DS needs to make the most effective possible use of finite resources by (a) concentrating on areaswhere it can make a difference and where others cannot, and (b) ensuring that diplomatic effort does not losefocus through too much attention to non-core activity. On (a), globalisation has of course given increasedimportance to trans-boundary issues such as the environment, organised crime, human rights, weapons’proliferation etc. The DS needs sufficient expertise to be able to give informed advice in these areas and toplay a part in policy formation and implementation on them. But it must not tilt the balance of its effort towardsgeneric issues, on which the FCO is not the lead department, at the expense of resources devoted to diplomacysensu stricto.

5. On (b), Sir Edward Clay has rightly said in his written submission to the Committee that the essentialexpertise of the DS is to influence, argue, negotiate, and to report, interpret and advise upon how internationaldevelopments bear on British interests, and vice-versa. These interests have always included trade. Resourcesdiverted to non-core activities (eg unnecessarily burdensome and intrusive centrally-controlled managementsystems) are resources lost to the DS’s core role. A fund such as the Global Opportunity Fund or the old KnowHow Fund is needed, not as a cosmetic pot of money available to support a post’s local enthusiasms, but as asubstantial tool to help achieve important policy objectives. Finally, to be effective with foreign interlocutors,the FCO must have, and be seen to have, the confidence of the government of the day.

…and what its staff needs to fulfil this role….

6. The DS’s USP requires its staff to acquire deep country and regional knowledge, and to establish usefulrelationships and effective access among policy-makers and other significant figures in foreign countries. Theseassets can only be gained through well-targeted postings at home and abroad, and through good training inoften difficult foreign languages. Analogous specialised expertise is needed for staff at missions to internationalinstitutions such as the EU and the UN. These are the capabilities which give the DS the edge over itscompetitors.

7. Language capabilities are a core component of DS expertise. The abolition of the Diplomatic LanguageCentre some years ago was controversial. Many thought that the outsourcing of tuition would be less effective.An internal review about a year ago concluded that the current arrangements deliver DS requirements fully



and effectively. Anecdotal evidence is less positive. For example, the four ambassadors to Turkey till the endof 2001 were Turkish language specialists. Their three successors, though very able officers, have not been.

8. Besides effective teaching, adequate allowances for language qualifications and for sustaining languageexpertise are important if there is to be a useful long-term dividend from the investment which adequatelanguage training represents.

…including career planning

9. There has been a steady degradation in the FCO’s capacity to deploy staff both in its own overall interestsand the career interests of its staff themselves. This reached a point some years ago when the Administrationinvited staff “to make their own careers”. The FCO must not, of course, be an authoritarian employer. However,if it is to get a commensurate return on its investment in its staff, it must deploy them in ways which serve theUK’s interests and further develop and exploit their professionalism.

10. This entails career planning which ensures the generation of regional, country, and internationalinstitutional expertise. While career plans may inevitably be disrupted by unexpected requirements, they shouldbe adhered to as far as possible so as to ensure that officers filling senior posts have developed a high level ofrelevant knowledge.

11. The careers of policy-capable officers will inevitably combine postings which relate to their specialistexpertise with ones which do not. However, the pressure to short-post officers, in response to unforeseenrequirements unrelated to their career plans, should be resisted as far as possible. A postings merry-go-roundis undesirable for many reasons; its impact on the generation of specialist expertise is one of them.

12. Economic pressures have led to the “localisation” of some overseas jobs previously filled by DS officers,because locally engaged staff are cheaper to employ than home-based ones. There may be good reasons foremploying locally-engaged staff. For example, she/he can fill a job for many years, and thus become therepository of a post’s knowledge of some aspect of its work. However, too many localised jobs limit thenumber of openings at a post to which it is possible to deploy DS officers and enable them to developlocal expertise.

Reductions in the Research Analysts have also impaired the FCO’s effectiveness

13. Another development which threatens the FCO’s expertise on foreign policy issues is the steadyweakening of the Research Analysts’ cadre. Till the late twentieth century, there existed a Research Departmentwhich provided high grade research and analysis for operational FCO departments. This central researchinstitution no longer exists. The result has been the loss not only of a unique capability but also of the FCO’sinstitutional memory, lack of which is now a significant weakness in FCO policy-making. The remaining RAsare all integrated into operational directorates and there is a strong temptation, not always resisted, to use theRAs as an alternative to main stream DS officers in political directorates as cuts bear down on these.

14. There can be advantages in analysts being co-located with the directorates relevant to their work. Butthe temptation to use them as a back-up policy-making capability as a consequence of decreasing mainstreamresources should be resisted. On the contrary, recruitment policies and a career structure for Analysts whichattracts candidates of a sufficiently high calibre properly to fulfil the FCO’s research requirements should beretained. Reductions in the RA resulting from budget cuts should not be bigger proportionately than thosesuffered by the policy-making stream.

In the face of budget cuts, resources should be sustained where UK interests are most significant, and lowerpriorities abandoned

15. Cuts in the FCO budget require relentless focus on the FCO’s core tasks both thematically (a DS officermust be able to make a career by specialising in China or trade promotion, but not in climate change) andfunctionally (he needs to be an outstanding negotiator and lobbyist, not an expert service provider). Thisemphasis on focus contradicts submissions to this enquiry to the effect that, in a period of budget cuts, itremains essential to retain the existing network of overseas posts as far as possible. On the contrary,comprehensive but in some places wafer-thin representation gives little added value. It also risks the mis-deployment of qualified staff from where they are really needed to promote serious British interests simply inorder to fly the flag. It is true that in the 21st century a crisis can erupt anywhere and unexpectedly and thatwe should if possible have posts ready to handle every contingency. But we cannot insure against every risk;focus requires us to place posts where we know they can further core UK interests, and to accept that in someunexpected circumstances this may leave us exposed. After all, the 21st century phenomenon of unexpectedcrises has been accompanied by a capacity to redeploy the resources needed to confront these far more quicklythan ever before.

8 January 2011



Written evidence from Daniel Korski

REVERSING DECLINE, REFORMING THE FCO

A History of Decline

Though the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is full of high-calibre people who are recognisedinternationally for their skills, and the department runs a top-tier overseas network, the last 15 years have notbeen kind to the FCO. Power over key issues has moved, probably permanently, to No 10. Resources havebeen siphoned off to the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Ministry of Defence. Eventhe Secret Intelligence Service, which reports to the Foreign Secretary, is said to be an ever more importantsource of foreign policy advice to the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, every government department is engaged indiplomacy of some form or other often without keeping the FCO informed of their work.

Then there is the impact of summitry—from European Councils to NATO Summits and G20 meetings—which has grown in importance (with the FCO’s role not always clear) while the work of the UN SecurityCouncil—a traditional FCO forte—has become increasingly less important.

To a degree, the FCO has always had to fight for its role. The first foreign secretary, Charles James Fox,was forced from office in 1783 because he disagreed with King George III over Britain’s India policy. Morethan 200 years later, Robin Cook resigned his position after falling out with Tony Blair over the Iraq War.Between these two ministerial resignations, fights between King Charles Street, the Palace and then DowningStreet have been legion. Leaders as diverse as Disraeli, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Chamberlain, Churchill,Thatcher and Blair have shared an “impatience with and distaste for the detailed niceties of the ForeignOffice”,22 to quote former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. Fights between Lloyd George and Lord Curzon,or between Neville Chamberlain and Anthony Eden, are famous. But even domestically-focused leaders haveoften challenged the FCO’s authority, as Clement Atlee did over Middle East policy in 1947.

Nor is inter-departmental competition a new phenomenon. Lord Hardinge, returning to the Foreign Officeas Permanent Undersecretary in June 1916, after an interval of six years spent as Viceroy of India, was advisedby the British Ambassador in Paris that the Foreign Office had become “in great part a ‘pass-on’ department”,by which he meant it “issues instructions at the instance of other offices”, but had little idea of what it wanted.Lord Hardinge’s first years back in the FCO have been described by a historian as a time when the department“had little influence on the policy-making process”.23 The late 20th century was scarcely different, withChurchill, Thatcher and Blair allowing other departments a greater diplomatic role.

New Issues, Old Office

But the kind of challenges the FCO faces today are different and harder to deal with. The interaction oftechnological, economic and social changes, the development of information and communication technologies,the increasing ability of citizens to access and use these technologies, and the rise of “new” issues such aspandemic diseases or resource depletion are changing the nature and scope of diplomacy. Very few of theseissues can be dealt with by one country alone, however powerful and rich. At the same time, many “old”foreign policy challenges remain—like the rise of China, the risk of inter-state warfare in West Asia or thethreat from Islamist terrorism. And it is not clear that the FCO has adapted to the “new” challenges whilemaintaining (and upgrading) its ability to deal with “old” or re-occurring issues.

For example, the department faced the late-2000s recession and the rise of the BRICs—two processes thatare fundamentally changing international relations—with limited (geo)economic expertise. Though the FCOhas recently taken steps to remedy the situation, as one FCO official put it, “the department has downgradedthe very skill we now need most”.24 The FCO has in fact agonised in recent years over whether to invest infunctional or geographical skills. But it has often flitted between the two and, in the end, probably underminedinvestment in both. To this day, for example, there are no more than a handful of Pastho speakers, despite thedecade-long presence in Kabul. The emphasis on developing “rounded” careers—where staff gain both policy-related and managerial expertise—coupled with the move to a laissez-faire HR system, where each official hasto manage their own career have allowed the FCO to climb the Investor in People rankings, but it seems tohave come at the expense of geographical knowledge.

Nor does the department have in-depth expertise in many other functional areas, like geo-economics orhealth. This might not be a problem if the FCO had an affiliated think-tank/university (like its counterparts inthe United States, Russia and the European Union), which can inject subject-matter expertise into thedepartment; or even if it has a dedicated research fund, such as in DFiD, for policy-relevant research. But itdoes not. And unlike the US State Department—where various forms of fellowships exist—there are few waysin which academics and experts can be brought into the FCO except as permanent staff, Special Advisers(SPaDs) or on temporary contracts as consultants. When outside experts are brought into the FCO, as was the22 Douglas Hurd, Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary: Two Centuries of Conflict and Personalities (London:

Orion Publishing Co, February 2010)23 Roberta M Warman, “The Erosion of Foreign Office Influence in the Making of Foreign Policy, 1916–1918”, The Historical

Journal, 15: 133–159, 197224 Interview with author, 17 December 2011.



case at times under foreign secretaries Cook, Straw and Miliband, the department proved wary of integratingthem into the policy process; most left after a short period.25

The investment in functional and geographical skills is not, as some would claim, a zero-sum choice.Knowing China helps advance Britain’s climate change agenda, which requires negotiation with Beijing.Similarly, Britain’s influence in NATO is strengthened if its diplomats bring first-hand and deep-seatedknowledge about the theatres of operation, like Afghanistan and the Balkans, to the organisation’s myriad ofcommittee meetings. The functional and geographical skills, in other words, reinforce each other. But abalanced investment in both is required, which does not seem to have been the case.

The FCO should, of course, not aim to maintain in-house expertise in all policy areas. But it should be ableto lead HMG’s international engagement—fashioning an over-all strategy, grounding it in local realities andhelping other departments deploy their expertise. To undertake campaigns, in other words. For a range ofreasons, however, the FCO has still not been able to assume such a role in the National Security Councilprocess. It remains one of, rather than the most important, member of the NSC.

The reasons the FCO has not asserted itself in the NSC process are manifold. In part, questions still remainabout the respective roles of the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the Foreign Office in the NSC process. Onlywhen these have been resolved, can the FCO play a key role. Second, other departments—having assertedthemselves overseas—are now reluctant to follow an FCO lead; they will follow an NSC direction, where theyhave ministerial representation, but are uncomfortable following the FCO alone. The creation of the CoalitionGovernment, with its need to agree policies among the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in sub-NSCcommittees—or a de facto “Upper Cabinet” of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister—may haveweakened rather than strengthened the FCO’s claim to departmental leadership, much as the post-World WarII expansion of the Cabinet committee system undermined the FCO’s role half a century ago.26

Finally, the FCO has failed to take on the role that was envisaged for it in the NSC because, after years ofmarginalisation, its staff do not necessarily posses the skills, training and incentives to lead cross-departmentalefforts—or at least give other departments the confidence that they have the requisite skills. Unsurprisingly, asenior Home Office official noted: “We would follow an FCO lead if we knew they would look after HMGinterests and not just FCO concerns”. This view was echoed in the findings of research undertaken by RichardTeuten and I, which was published as a RUSI Whitehall Paper.27 Based on fifty interviews with civil servantsfrom across the government and military officers the issue of the FCO’s difficulties with representing alldepartments, as opposed to itself, was highlighted several times. One explanation may lie in the degradationof the FCO’s strategy functions, which are key if the department is to play a lead policy role. The other reasonmay lie in cultural and administrative boundaries that still exist between the Diplomatic Service and the HomeCivil Service.

Reforms: Constant but Inadequate

In response to its predicament, the FCO has undergone a steady stream of reforms, trying to implement aCabinet Office review, which urged the department to think “think radically about its place in a changingworld”. Often, however, the reforms have been skin-deep. As ex-ambassador Charles Crawford noted: “TheFCO absurdly went from seven to eight to nine to (phew) 10 Strategic Priorities. It then gave up on StrategicPriorities in favour of . . . four new Key Policy Goals”.28 To this list can now be added a return, under theCoalition Government, to three Priorities.

Changing priorities—from seven to nine then 10, four and now three—have not, however, lead tofundamental reform of the FCO’s structure. Oftentimes, existing work is retrofitted into a new set of priorities.In this period staff are also focused ever-more inwards, on targets and internal processes, rather than outwards.The average senior official, for example a director, spends more time inwards, managing processes thanworking on policy or building senior-level links with counterparts either bilaterally or multilaterally. Postingsare now comparatively short, and so in-depth regional expertise is limited, while the centrally-decreed emphasison having a rounded career—which takes in both management and policy experiences—has arguablyundermined the FCO’s first-rate policy skills. It is perhaps unsurprising that the department has felt marginalisedand begun to suffer from what William Hague described as “timidity”.

Way Ahead: A New-look FCO

To deal with these problems—some of which are structural, some policy-related—the FCO will need toconsider a number of reforms.25 The exception seems to be press work, which somehow is accepted as being an area where the FCO has fewer skills and needs

to recruit externally.26 Zara Steiner, “The Foreign and Commonwealth Office Resistance and Adaptation to Changing Times” in Gaynor Johnson (ed.),

The Foreign Office and British diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2005)27 Richard Teuten and Daniel Korski, Preparing For Peace: Britain’s Contribution and Capabilities, Whitehall Papers, No 74,

201028 Charles Crawford, “How Labour dumbed down the Foreign Office”, 17 May 2010, www.conservativehome.co.uk



Strategy

The first step is for the FCO to decide how it will manage the balance between its priorities—currentlydescribed as “Security”, “Prosperity” and “Consular Affairs”—and the department’s other areas of work. Re-drafting to-level priorities, but squeezing on-going activities into new headings—sometimes retroactivelyjustifying their relevance in the light of the new priorities—needs to end. Instead, the FCO should set up anFuture FCO Task Force, which can examine the department’s structure, look at other organisations, includingother foreign ministries, and propose a new model. A key part of any reform must upgrade the department’s

geo-economic expertise by creating a new post of Director-General Geo-Economics, a sort of second PoliticalDirector, who can oversee the Trade Team, Global Economy Group, Climate Change and the Energy Group.This would effectively split the Directorate-General for Globalisation and the EU.

Third, the FCO needs to find new ways to bring expertise into the department, and facilitate access tooutside assistance. On the State Department model, the FCO should re-invigorate the Strategy and Policy Unit,increasing its staff with at least half its personnel recruited externally or from other government departments.Tied to this, the FCO should establish a Visiting Fellows programme to allow academics, businesspeople andsubject-matter experts into the Civil Service. It will also be necessary to create a better-funded researchprogramme, so the FCO to purchase research and analysis externally. Finally, thought needs to be given to re-shaping the Royal College of Defence Studies, part of the Defence Academy, into a FCO-owned, civilian-led,Royal Academy of Diplomacy and Security to serve as the department’s academy/think-tank.

These reforms will help re-build the FCO’s brainpower—a prerequisite for a lead role in the NSC process.But one additional step should be considered. The Foreign Secretary should establish a bi-annual Chevening

Retreat, which would aim to bring top-flight thinkers, and practitioners together to discuss Britain’s foreignpolicy. A sort of British version of the Munich Security Conference, but smaller and more exclusive, perhapsthemed not on security, but on geo-economics.

People

Improving the FCO’s policy capacity will, in addition, require the development of security-related and geo-economic expertise. The easiest way would be for the FCO needs to lead the creation of a cross-departmentalNational Security Cadre (like the European “Fast Stream”) of officials who specialise in security-relatedwork. Similarly, the FCO, Treasury and DfiD should jointly create a cross-departmental Geo-Economics

Cadre, different than the Economic Service (or a sub-grouping thereof) for economists, political analysts,and businesspeople.

In addition, to improve the quality of staff not only should the FCO begin to look outside the department(and even outside the civil service) for ambassadorial appointments, but will need to formalise a career-long

learning programme, so that its personnel constantly renew their skills and improve their competencies. Likefor military officers, such a programme should not be optional, but contain clear trajectory, including anobligatory mid-career period in graduate-level education for example at a university. Looking at how seniorFCO staff, including ambassadors, are chosen, trained, evaluated and given incentives is also needed. Key mustbe involving other departments in the selection and evaluation process of ambassadors.

Finally, the FCO needs to look anew at its greatest asset—the overseas network—and, most importantly,whether the department is maintaining (and, in future, developing) the necessary in-country expertise. Here anumber of reforms should be considered. Postings could be divided into short, medium and long-termcategories—depending on a number of criteria, such as the nature of the society, the difficulty of the language,and the importance of the country to the UK. In most countries, the usual postings system—three years withan option of a fourth—can continue. But in other countries, this should be five to seven years, while in a few,high-priority countries, postings should be seven years or longer or, alternatively, careers should be structuredaround several postings in the same country.

The FCO then needs to overhaul its personnel system and culture to embrace the reality of inter-

departmental teamwork. One way would be for the Diplomatic Service and the externally-focused parts ofthe Home Civil Service to be merged into an “HM External Relations Service”, which will provide FCO,DFID, MoD and parts of the Home Office and DECC on the same terms—thus facilitating inter-change andcooperation. All this would require a change to the laissez-faire way in which the FCO now manages thecareers of its personnel—both diplomats and other officials—with a more “managed” system (and a greaterrole for the HR department) needed.

Resources

A key priority should be to re-examine the use of programme funds. The inability of Posts to spend evensmall amounts of funds, without a cross-departmental, and lengthy process hampers their reach and influence.Thought needs to go into creating a Strategic Investment Fund for use by Posts. Under this heading also comesthe issue of commercial diplomacy. The state of Britain’s finances demands that the FCO scale-up itscommercial activities. After having been at the margins of the FCO’s work, the Coalition Government hasalready done much to prioritise trade and commercial advancement while in the Cabinet Office reviewerssingled out UKTI as an effective delivery agent. But more can probably still be done. This could be an areathe Foreign Affairs Committee might want to look in future.



Future Practices

The final set of reforms the FCO needs to consider concern the changing nature of international relations,the role of the BRICs and the gradual diminution of the Britain’s traditional strengths—bilateral relationships,military power, concomitant membership in many international organisations and a permanent UNSC seat.

Developing a detailed plan should be left to the above-mentioned Future FCO Task Force, but considerationshould be given to a number of new initiatives, including the creating three British Institutes in China, Braziland Nigeria. These would aim to improve societal links, and the FCO’s cultural diplomacy, replacing the roleof the British Council in these countries. In a similar vein, the Task Force should examine the creation of ajoint Gulf/Britain School of Diplomacy and explore the possibility of hybrid Posts eg in Liberia with Turkey.Similarly, thought needs to be given to having more secondments from BRIC and sub-BRIC nations

including at embassies/posts, as is now the case with European and US diplomats.

17 January 2011

A former Civil Servant and an adviser to the International Development Secretary, Daniel Korski has workedin the FCO in Washington, Basra and Kabul and now works for the European Council on Foreign Relationsas a Senior Policy Fellow.

Written evidence from Catarina Tully

1. I have structured my responses to your questions around the following headings: the challenge facingforeign ministries globally; choices about the FCO’s role; and implications for capabilities and resources.In summary:

— The changing nature of our world means many Foreign Ministries are wrestling with the issuesand questions raised in the FASC inquiry. The widely-claimed weakness of the FCO’s positionwithin HMG in the past few years is mainly a result of this changing environment.

— Despite efforts over previous years, the FCO’s strategic purpose has become blurred and requiressome refocus. More importantly, it needs the structures, capabilities and resources to fulfill arefocused role.

— The FCO successfully acts as the international implementation arm of HMG through its networkof embassies. The key choice on the role of the FCO is the extent to which the FCO takes thecross-Whitehall lead on setting the strategic context for HMG’s international policy and on newinternational policy challenges, like global resource constraints. A maximalist interpretation of itsrole is necessary for the FCO to be at the centre of government.

— In order to fulfill its role effectively, there needs to be more specialisation in the FCO, higherlevels of programmatic funding, strengthened analytical skills and greater cross-Whitehall clarityon what FCO strategic leadership looks like.

2. Biography: Cat Tully is an independent consultant working on foreign and development policy issues.She was formerly Strategy Project Director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until August 2010. Shehas worked on strategy development across the private, government and civil society sectors, including forHMG Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, Procter and Gamble, Christian Aid, World Bank and the UN. Cat’sresearch areas include: horizon scanning and strategic risk management; machinery of government in nationalstrategy-making; technology, public engagement and governance; and global public goods and resources.

Context: The Challenges Facing Foreign Ministries Across the World

3. As highlighted by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, the changing nature of our world means manyForeign Ministries are wrestling with the issues and questions raised in the FASC inquiry. The US’s QDDR,released last month, looks at the capabilities needed by 21st century diplomatic and development services. TheGerman government has conducted various conferences on what a 21st century foreign service should looklike. The French 2008 White Papers on Foreign Affairs and Defence and National Security examine the divisionof labour between Departments, and the structures and capabilities needed in a Foreign Ministry. Together withinnovations introduced by Canada, Australia and Singapore, among others, these experiences provide anevidence-base that is worthwhile mining more systematically.29

4. The impact of technological, economic and demographic drivers, and the resulting blurring of linesbetween foreign and domestic policy are well documented elsewhere. I will nevertheless briefly explicitlysummarise here the challenges and opportunities that commentators agree that the 21st century multipolarworld will bring. HMG and the FCO have made strong progress in addressing all of these areas and areconsidered to be ahead of the curve by other governments in some areas like public diplomacy and thought-leadership on new complex global challenges. However, we need to run just to keep still in this situation—continual change requires continual adaptation by HMG.29 This is a piece of analysis I am embarking on, conducting a cross-country comparison of the UK with various other OECD and

BRIC countries.



(a) New sets of policy challenges, often uncertain, diffuse and interlinked: these include complex, non-linear systems of global and regional public goods (eg water, labour, food, energy and carbon security),new security challenges (in particular around radicalisation, early intervention and conflict prevention),and the interlinkages between economic and national security.

(b) A growth in the impact of different actors and evolving means of engagement and influence: not justthe growth of BRIC and other countries, but also regional and local actors (eg cities), high-net worthindividuals, diaspora groups, state-owned and multinational businesses, civil society, etc.

(c) Changing and multiplying forms of governance within which to promote the UK’s national interest:including the different “G” groupings, ad hoc alliances, UN, revitalised regional bodies and theEuropean Union, counting the External Action Service.

5. This changing environment poses three challenges to the process of conducting HMG international policy:

(a) greater need for coherence and joining-up as increasing numbers of Departmental and non-governmentactors become involved in the international sphere;

(b) the functions and structure of the diplomatic service need some recalibration to the new strategiccontext; and

(c) the nature of running operations abroad is different, with the changing nature and cost of security, useof different technologies, etc.

6. The FCO is an excellent organisation, with enviable assets including staff, analytical power, and thenetwork. Its strategic context however, as for other Foreign Ministries, is increasingly challenging. The widely-claimed weakness of the FCO’s position within HMG in the past few years is mainly a result of this changingenvironment. The purpose of the FCO has become less clear as its traditional role and key asset—as gatekeeperand conduit of international interactions—has disappeared. The increased complexity of the environment, theincrease in the number of its partners, the participation of domestic Departments in international networks, thedifferent potential entry points or ways it can make a difference, combined with a sharp reduction in resources,has meant that the FCO has had many focal points and spread its skills thinly. As a result, and despite variousattempts to strategically sharpen it, the FCO’s strategic purpose has become blurred and requires a gentlerefocus. The FASC’s inquiry is an excellent opportunity to address what the FCO is for, namely refine thepurpose it fulfills for HMG and for the UK, describe clearly the problems it can help address, and ensure thatit has the structures, resources and capabilities to support its purpose.

Key Choices about the FCO’s Role: Maximalist or Minimalist Vision

7. For the purpose of this paper, I have distinguished two functions that the FCO owns in HMG. One isabout acting on behalf of HMG internationally—effectively being the international implementation arm of

HMG. These roles include running the network of embassies internationally, including at internationalorganisations, providing consular support and crisis response, being a platform for UK policy delivery in-country, and sending expertise and knowledge about the country back to HMG.

8. This role is conducted well. These roles need logistical support and guidance from the centre (like thecentral crisis response team or UKTI) but more of the decisions should be decentralised so that strategy-makingat the country level can be made by front line staff. There is also a need to continue to stay abreast oftechnological developments that provide the potential to drive value for money, like laptop diplomats.

9. Recommendation: decentralise more decision-making powers to embassies so they have a stronger leadon developing cross-HMG country strategies. Continue to develop innovative solutions to provide networkcoverage that drives value for money.

10. The other function is leading policy. Some narrow policy areas are squarely within the FCO’s remit, egnon-proliferation. But to fulfill the Foreign Secretary’s vision of the FCO being at the centre of government,the FCO also needs to take the lead on setting the strategic vision for HMG’s international policy. This meanstwo things. First, to hold the overview and collaboratively set the framework within which all of WhitehallDepartments’ international policy interventions can sit coherently (this overview needs to be strategicallyaligned with the SDSR and DFID’s plans and agreed by the National Security Council). Second, the responseto the challenges and opportunities identified in paragraph 4 need to be led somewhere within government—and they should be led by the FCO. I have highlighted the gaps that remain in addressing these new issues:

— New complex policy issues: The gap here is around upping analytical (and economic) skills oncomplex systems, enhancing creativity and innovation in policy responses and initiatives, leadinghorizon-scanning and identifying discontinuities. There is excellent work done across differentgovernment Departments, but there is not one place where it is fully pulled together.

— Growth in different actors: The gap here is around thinking innovatively on engaging with newactors; enhancing the UK’s influencing strategy, especially on the sub-multilateral forms ofgovernance (regions and cities) and the use of soft power; and coordinating a joined-up andinnovative government approach to engaging with international non-traditional actors eg private-public partnerships with businesses to achieve common goals.

— Changing governance: The gap here is around promoting greater creative thinking on promotingUK’s national interest within different forms of international governance and fora.



11. Recommendation: that the FCO takes the strategic lead for setting the context for UK international policy(with the SDSR and reporting to/agreed by the NSC); takes the policy lead on global public goods issues;takes the overview on international horizon-scanning across government; and leads coordination on engagingwith different international actors.

Implications for Capabilities and Resources

12. None of my commentary is new analysis: indeed the FCO is engaging already with many of these issuesand has embarked on various initiatives to improve its capability. Notable examples include excellent analysisand innovative policy/approaches led by Research Analysts, Communications Directorate, the Global EconomyGroup, Middle East and North Africa Directorate, among many. The question remains therefore why there isa certain fuzziness to the traction of the FCO centre. And how to address it without committing significantlymore resources. There are five areas that can be addressed:

— FCO staff are currently required to have a very broad set of skills. The FCO’s two distinct functions(running the international implementation arm of HMG and leading policy) arguably increasinglyrequire two different skill sets, with a lot of overlap in between. Skills required in Posts includemanaging the post, detailed analysis and reporting, influencing skills, consensual negotiations,crisis response, and a practical ability to respond to the plethora of different challenges thrown updaily in often difficult environments. Skills at the policy centre require deep knowledge andnetworks in Whitehall, systems thinking, horizon scanning, and analytical skills around prioritisingoptions, exposing policy tradeoffs, identifying synergies and developing innovative responses.Recommendation: There is a case to be made for FCO staff to specialise within two separate careerstreams. A diplomatic embassy staff run the embassies, possibly with longer posting duration,themselves led by ambassadors from across different Whitehall Departments where appropriate.And policy staff at the centre would focus on policy expertise and analysis, developing the skillsto lead strategic thinking across government, and horizon scanning. There would be secondmentsbetween these two cadres, but in particular the policy staff should be open to cross-Whitehall andexternal secondments. This would permit staff to focus on specialising their skills and expertise,where at the moment they are asked to be generalists.

— The FCO faces financial resource constraints that limit its ability to promote its policy agenda bothwith other government departments and international partners. Relatively small amounts ofadditional programmatic funding could get value for money in terms of traction. Recommendation:that FCO programmatic funding is increased.

— The FCO’s analytical capability has been reduced in recent years in various economic andgeographic policy areas, thankfully now being addressed. Recommendation: to maintain anddevelop the FCO’s analytical, policy and language expertise; create an external think tank withDFID and MOD that can introduce innovative ideas; use both government and external intellectualresources (eg the Royal College of Defence Studies, National School of Government, Institute ofGovernment, Chatham House and RUSI); and systematically engage with senior internationalforeign policy thinkers and leaders via high-profile conferences.

— Other government Departments can be resistant for the FCO to take the role in setting the strategiccontext because they feel that the FCO does not always reflect their interests, perspective andanalysis. Recommendation: At a macro-level, an agreed regular FCO-led process for setting thestrategic vision should occur, similar to the US’ new QDDR process. This could be arranged tocoincide with a new government term and the Defence Review. On a micro-level, the FCO andother Departments should develop a clearly defined process and methodology for developingthematic and country strategies and coordinating Departmental business planning processes.Organisational innovations (like bringing together the Strategy Units or Policy Units across MOD,DFID, FCO and Cabinet Office NSS) could also be explored. Joint training and secondmentswould also be valuable as would a forum for FDNS Department senior leaders/policy DGs to meetand discuss common issues and align strategic vision.

23 January 2011

Email from Rt Hon Jack Straw MP

Stating the “role of the FCO” in a mission statement or its equivalent is very straightforward. It is words tothe effect that the FCO is there to represent the United Kingdom, its people, government, businesses and otherinstitutions—and its values—in dealing with nations and peoples overseas. As Foreign Secretary I put myname to a number of such statements.

Much more difficult in my experience is setting out the priority which should be accorded the separate partsof the activities which make up this role, agreeing on metrics (if any) to measure activity and its outcomes (aswell as outputs), and determining with the Treasury whether and how this should all be paid for.

As I am sure members of the Committee are well aware there has been a long-standing suspicion of theFCO in the Treasury. (This goes back well beyond the last Labour administration). It is partly cultural. The



Treasury at official level like to compare the difference to that between “gentlemen, and players” (with theTreasury the latter)—though there was never any evidence that I saw that the social background of Treasuryofficials was very different from that of FCO officials.

Part of the work of the FCO is difficult directly to measure, but this should not obscure its value. Buildingsuccessful networks, gaining the confidence of those in key positions of power or influence, is a key role forall our diplomats abroad. If relations with a particular country are in any event on an even keel, the breadthand depth of the diplomatic relationships will not make much difference to Britain’s interests in that country.But if there is, for example, a political or consular crisis involving the UK and that country, then the success—or otherwise—of our relationships will become all to clear. I’d be happy to offer some examples.

The consequence of the Bali bombing, and criticisms of our response, in October 2002 led me to overseean upgrading of the standing arrangements for dealing with consular crises, with a separately staffed 24 hourResponse Centre in London, and “rapid response teams” on standby around the world. On the whole thesearrangements have worked well. But in the world of 24 hour news, and the internet, handling consular criseshas become more difficult, as expectations from British citizens, and demands on the FCO are raised, and theFCO’s work has to be undertaken in full public scrutiny.

One aspect of the inquiry is relations with other Government departments. The then Permanent Secretary(now Lord Jay), and I greatly encouraged secondments both ways. (My Principal Private Secretary at theMinistry of Justice, 2008–10 came from the FCO (since returned), and did an excellent job for me). I amhowever unclear how extensive is the two-way traffic, and whether there have been any studies of the effectsof secondments both for the individuals’ careers, and in the interests of better governance.

These are just a few thoughts which the Committee may find helpful.

Let me know if you would like any further details.

25 January 2011

Written evidence by Peter W Marshall and other former members of the FCO

Once not so long ago the Foreign & Commonwealth Office was admired across the World, and its diplomatswere held in high regard and their views were always respected. It was famous for its influential skills, its styleand its insight.

Lets go back to the basics and give the matter some deeper thought, perhaps visionary as we did whenBritain was a proud nation and brimming with confidence. We had a role to play then, and the FCO was at theforefront of this. The role of the FCO is as important today as it was then, let us not forget that.

What has gone wrong? Today the picture is one of mediocrity. Clearly something has gone wrong, and it isnow a golden opportunity for us to get this right, no matter the cost. All views need to be critically consideredand a strategic process needs to be undertaken so that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office can onceagain aspire to becoming admired the world over. A Diplomatic Service reflects the health and the wealth of acountry. The downward spiral can be stopped, and the former prestige of the FCO can be restored.

If we wish to maintain a leading presence in this fast changing world, then we need to take risks and bebold. We need to prepare and spend for the long term, and not cut, as we have been doing for the short term,as this clearly has had a detrimental effect on the working of government departments.

A unique delivery, one that is not just about budget! The FCO outlasts a Government.

We are still capable of running and producing a Rolls Royce renowned for its reliability, we should not settlefor lesser ambitions!

Loss of Independence

The FCO has lost a lot of its independence, and Foreign Secretaries of the recent past have given in tooeasily to No. 10. The PM should be in overall charge of Govt Depts but each Secretary of State should beallowed to make the running and decide policy. Foreign Secretaries of substance and experience are required,in what is and always was a key Government Department. For example Lord Carrington and Lord Howe.

Too Much Interference, Outside Examination and Budgetary Constraints

The emasculation of the FCO began in the Thatcher years. The arrival of PM Blair who followed aPresidential style of politics (USA style) made things even more difficult for the FCO. Gordon Brown in histime as Chancellor of the Exchequer was effectively the second PM and the power the Treasury wieldedresulted in its pre-eminence in Whitehall. The FCO had become even more marginalised! The Treasury wasthe final arbiter of policy, if it didn’t like something it would be revised or abandoned. Objectives and businessplans had to be clear and achievable in no more than three years and often within one year! For the FCO thiswas no easy task as it is no easy matter to define Foreign Policy within three years or for that matter one year,



a lot of the important work carried out by the FCO is unquantifiable. Sir C. Meyer, in his recent publicationmakes this point most strongly! Too much examination and scrutiny can sometimes have the wrong outcome.

The Media and Public Scrutiny

This detailed scrutiny of the machinery of government and corporate governance, the disappearance of theculture of deference, the increasing sophistication and interference by the media, the greater use of selectcommittees, have made it more difficult for government departments to explain their work to outsiders and tojustify their existence.

Why?

The complexity of what they do is sometimes difficult to explain. To convince of its necessity and its worth.Government officials need to do this in front of the media and TV cameras.

What can be done to get this right?

To put this right more deft handling by the FCO News Dept will be required. Better training will be neededso that staff are able to handle a more aggressive media in a sophisticated and effective manner. This must bepaid for, and funds should be made available to improve upon this area of FCO work.

The FCO is a Unique and Different Service

It requires an elitist role, with independent ways as distinct from a very different Home Civil service.

This leads to another question that should be addressed. What is a good diplomat.

A good diplomat should be someone who is culturally versed, proud to be British in the full meaning of theword and someone who is familiar and comfortable with being abroad. They are surrounded by a differentvalue system and one where they can feel comfortable. In a period of crisis they are the first point of contactin a foreign country and with its government officials at the highest level.

They should be of the highest calibre, recruited as the brightest and the best, and where necessarylanguage competent.

First Impressions and Valedictory Despatches

The business of writing first impressions and valedictory despatches was a good business and one that shouldbe reinstated by the FCO. The contribution made by Heads of Post in this regard has been extraordinary andengaging. It is this colour and this know how that gives value to the FCO and the government, along withsome healthy and confidential criticism from time to time. These despatches have been written by highlycapable people with essential input from colleagues who know about abroad. Why do away with them? Thisfreedom of expression and opportunity should be encouraged and not dismissed.

Position of Oriental Secretary

Once we had a position in the FCO called “Oriental Secretary” the old rank of 3rd secretary. Young graduateentrants who were language competent filled this vital post. One of the last to serve in this position was Mr C.Stitt, who was sent to Kabul, Afghanistan. It is a vital part of the reporting process of any mission, a listeningpost that can provide some excellent information of matters on the ground, in key areas of political reporting.

Staff Recruitment

Staff recruitment should be decided purely on merit and not on tokenism, to fulfil the urge to reflect thewider/broader society! A key strength that we should look for in our diplomats aside from the ability forindependent thought and integrity, is a mature sense of perspective and balance in the carrying out of theirduties and in making their judgments.

This could be promoted by enlisting a number of retired diplomats to assist the FCO in this cruciallyimportant area.

More Staff and Not Less

In Sweden the DS service has been expanded and given a larger budget. The view taken that the businessof the Foreign Office is more important today to Sweden than it was before. Perhaps we should look morecarefully at what our neighbours are doing to meet the challenges of the new world order? Have we done thisin any serious way?

Self Interest

Bilateral relations are still fed by self interest. This aspect of our work needs to be maintained, and carriedout by our diplomats. This requires special skills, that perhaps only the best can perform. It would then be



essential to have our diplomats involved with these essential core areas, rather like the two tier system thatwas present before with an A stream entrant and an E stream entrant. The A stream entrant was recruited todo the work of diplomacy and the E streamer was essentially an administrator. An Ambassador/HighCommissioner should not be saddled with administrative work and form filling, this should be left to theDeputy Head of Post to do.

In conclusion, we take the view that the FCO should take charge of what it is good at! Namely Diplomacy.That is what it was always good at.

This requires expertise at the highest level, and recruiters should be looking for the brightest and the best.The FCO is a key Government Department and more independence is certainly required for it to be an effectiveand lead government department. There are many ways that a more meaningful and well directed FCO canoperate, one where its integrity and independence are fundamental to its well being.

Too much interference has crippled this ability!

What made the FCO run so well in the past was its ability to win friends and influence. We need to refocuson this core skill. We need to work closely with the British Council and the BBC on information work, mattersof culture and education and English a universal main language.

The FCO is in a state of confusion and there is no doubt that its role needs to be more clearly defined. Wecannot afford to get this wrong.

We hope that some of the comments and suggestions in the above submission are of value to the ForeignAffairs Committee.

26 January 2011

Lead:

Bio Details of the contributors to this submission:

Peter W Marshall, Lead contributor. FCO, last post Beijing, China 1984, retired.Bernard Marshall, last post Iraq conflict resolution desk, FCO retired.Mike Hall, last post Strasbourg, Deputy Head of Mission, FCO retired.Alan Smith, last post Majorca, HM Consul, FCO retired.Eric Mattey, last post Deputy Head of Mission, Doha, Qatar, FCO retired.Alp Mehmet, last post UK Ambassador Iceland, FCO retired

Letter from Sir Peter Marshall KCMG CVO

I have followed with close attention the timely and searching inquiry which the Committee have launchedinto the role of the FCO in UK Government. In the light of the evidence, both oral and written, which theCommittee have so far received, I venture to offer a complementary line of approach to the question, namelya study of the rise of the advisory role in diplomacy.

The familiar proposition that “foreign policy is about what to do, and diplomacy is about how to do it” hasits uses as a reminder that it is one thing to devise a foreign policy and that it may be quite another successfullyto implement it. But the proposition is seriously misleading in as far as it is taken to mean that the nationaldiplomatic apparatus at home and abroad has no significant part in the formulation of policy, as distinct fromits execution. The truth rather is that while the Diplomatic Service is and must remain primarily an executivebody, and while there have been profound changes in its executive role during the past 100 years, the changeshave been of even more significance in its advisory role. The latter could be said scarcely to have existed evena century ago. The history of the Diplomatic Service in the last 100 years has in consequence turned largelyon the evolution of its advisory function.

At the risk of some oversimplification, the evolution of the advisory role of the Diplomatic Service can betraced by reference to six administrative landmarks:

(1) the Foreign Office reforms of 1905–06;

(2) the 1943 White Paper Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service;

(3) the Report of the Plowden Committee, 1964;

(4) the 1978 White Paper The United Kingdom’s Overseas Representation;

(5) Mr Jack Straw’s 2003 White Paper UK International Priorities, and

(6) HMG’s series of statements in October, 2010, on National Security, the Strategic Defence and SecurityReview and the Comprehensive Spending Review, and the ensuing FCO Business Plan.

These landmarks are examined individually in what follows.



I The “Inverted Sieve”: the 1905–06 Foreign Office Reforms

In the 19th century and earlier, diplomats served only abroad. The Foreign Office was staffed by a separatebreed of Clerks. They did not necessarily consider it was their duty to offer advice to the Ministers on whosebehalf they shuffled the papers. The volume and complexity of business was inexorably rendering untenableany such laid back approach to diplomacy. In the first decade of the 20th century a new system was introducedinto the Foreign Office whereby papers were filtered upward through the hierarchy, rather than passeddownward from the top. It was inherent in this process of upward filtering, aptly described as the “invertedsieve”, that the upward filtering would be accompanied by comment and recommendation on the papers sofiltered. At a stroke the Foreign Office Clerks became advisers rather than scribes. The effect on the conductof business was profound. The Foreign Office started to assume the general character with which we arefamiliar today, albeit on a far smaller scale, in which the advisory and executive elements in its work becameever more closely related.

II “Diplomacy in Fetters”: the 1943 Proposals for Reform of the Foreign Service

The multiple convulsions of the Great War infused the reform process with an urgency which it mightotherwise have lacked. But events were moving faster still. There had been a vast increase in the responsibilitiesof government, especially in the fields of economic and social management; in the volume and speed ofcommunications; in public concern with international affairs; and in the overlap between internal and externalaffairs.

Sir Victor Wellesley, Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office from 1925 to 1936, contendedthat democratic diplomacy and foreign policy—“for all practical purposes they are one and inseparable”—nolonger functioned effectively because their background had changed while the machinery and the mindset ofdiplomacy had remained static. Diplomacy was “in fetters”.

This sombre analysis lay behind the presentation to Parliament in January, 1943, by the wartime CoalitionGovernment of the White Paper Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service. Its mainspring was theconviction that the process of amalgamation of hitherto separate services engaged in diplomatic work whichwas started at the end of the Great War needed to be completed. Specifically this involved the combining ofthe Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service with the Consular Service and the Commercial DiplomaticService to form a single Foreign Service. This would require the creation of a comprehensively-trained bodyof generalists capable of serving all over the world, drawn from a wider social background than previously,administered on a basis adequate to modern requirements, and able to provide career opportunities to all themembers of the Service. The White Paper warned that this would require a considerable increase in numbersand a significant rise in expenditure.

III Ends, Ways and Means: the Plowden Report, February, 1964

The radical and imaginative proposals for reform set forth in 1943 were of necessity outlined only briefly inthe White Paper itself. It was natural that putting them into effect after the war would encounter a number ofproblems. The latter fell into two broad categories. In the first was improvement in the terms and conditionsof the members of the new combined Foreign Service, so as to ensure the achievement of the objective ofcreating a service drawn from a wider social background and fully open to, those without private financialresources. In the second was the nature of the task which the service was expected to fulfil, which in the eventproved to be much more onerous than was envisaged in 1943, both as regards prevailing internationalconditions and by virtue of our chronic post-war relative economic weakness.

Beyond these two categories there loomed the vexed question of the machinery of government for themanagement of international affairs, including the viability of the increasingly anomalous separateCommonwealth Relations Office (itself an uneasy amalgam of the former Dominions and India Offices) andthe related question of whether the Foreign Service could realistically aspire to provide the corps of omni-competent generalists required to implement world wide government policies.

By virtue of my responsibilities at the time, I was principally responsible for urging on HMG the case of areview of the 1943 Reforms in operation. The case was eventually accepted, but with a significant wideningof the mandate. In July, 1962, the Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan appointed a high level Committee onRepresentational Services Overseas, under the chairmanship of Lord Plowden, an eminent business man andpublic servant. The Committee’s Report, presented to Parliament in February, 1964, is a superb analytical andprescriptive achievement. Its simultaneous mastery of the big picture and of operational and administrativedetail gives it an authority which attaches to no other document on the subject.

Strategically, the Report insisted that it was in Britain’s interest and in the general interest that Britain’svoice should continue to be heard, despite the clear decline in our relative military and economic strength.Functionally, the Committee put “advising HMG” at the top of the list of tasks, and specified that economicand commercial work had now assumed a position of fundamental importance and “must be regarded as a firstcharge on the resources of the overseas services”.

Administratively, the Committee recommended the amalgamation of the Foreign Service, the CommonwealthService, and the Trade Commissioner Service to form “HM Diplomatic Service”. For fear of jeopardising the



achievement of the substantial improvements they sought in the terms and conditions of members of theService, the Committee steered clear of controversial questions of the machinery of government. They likewisestopped short of recommending the amalgamation of the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices, suggestinginstead that the two Departments should be administered jointly by a Diplomatic Service Administration Office.(The full merger took place in 1968.)

Diminished national Self-Confidence: the Duncan and Think Tank Reports

Politically and economically, the 1960s were a discouraging decade. Dean Acheson reflected the situationwaspishly in a speech in 1962 with his observation that “Britain had lost an Empire and not yet found a role”.In 1963 de Gaulle vetoed our first bid to join the EEC. The incoming Labour Government of 1964 was assailedwith problems from the outset. A further devaluation of sterling appeared inevitable, and eventually occurredin November, 1967. The UK launched a second bid that year to join the EEC which was similarly rebuffed byde Gaulle. In January, 1968, the Government announced Britain’s military withdrawal for East of Suez. Therewas a general sentiment that it was time to be more modest about our international pretensions. The PlowdenReport could seem to be a counsel of perfection.

Such was the background to the appointment in August, 1968, by the Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart,of a further Committee of inquiry under the prominent industrialist Sir Val Duncan. Its avowed purpose wasto save money. In its report, published in July, 1969, the Committee declared that Britain was now “a majorpower of the second rank” and recommended that our representational effort should be focussed on what itcalled “the Area of Concentration”—“a dozen or so countries of Western Europe plus the United States”—andthat other countries should be regarded as belonging to the “Outer Area”, where our interests were largelycommercial. Even at the time the Committee’s proposal seemed bizarre. The tide of world wide interdependencewas already rising strongly. It soon swept the notion away.

The case for cutting our foreign policy coat according to our diminished national cloth did not disappear.Our efforts to join the EEC finally bore fruit on January 1, 1973. Yet our economic difficulties persisted. TheUK borrowed heavily from the IMF in1976. Worse still, there seemed to be in Whitehall, and perhaps also inWestminster, an air of lassitude, if not of defeatism. It was suggested that “in the 1950s we managed decline;in the 1960s we mismanaged decline; and in the 1970s we declined to manage”.

It was in this sombre atmosphere that in January, 1976, James Callaghan, at that time Foreign Secretary,asked the Central Policy Review Staff (the “Think Tank”) to undertake yet another review, extending to allaspects of overseas representation. As in the case of the Cuncan Committee, the quest was for savings. TheCPRS produced a massive Report in August, 1977. Its message in essence was that the Diplomatic Serviceshould do less and, on a selective basis, do it less thoroughly. The CPRS recommended that there should bemore interchange, and even a merger in some areas, with the Home Civil Service, and that a special exportpromotion service and a special aid administration should be created. The CPRS went on to canvass theabolition of the British Council, with a redistribution of its functions between the Ministry of OverseasDevelopment and the Department of Education and Science. As regards the BBC and the notion of a universalbroadcasting service, the time had come for a radical look at existing broadcasting patterns.

IV The 1978 White Paper on UK Overseas Representation: Flawed in Parts

The bravado of the CPRS Report, combined with criticisms and queries from a number of reports fromvarious House of Commons Committees, seemed to call for an ex cathedra statement of the Government’sviews. In August, 1978, in the closing months of his administration, James Callaghan, now Prime Minister,and the Foreign Secretary, Dr (now Lord) Owen presented to Parliament a White Paper The United Kingdom’sOverseas Representation. It is something of an oddity.

On the one hand, it is a clear and up-to-date expose of the role of the Diplomatic Service in the difficultinternational conditions in which we found ourselves as a country. It showed how much common groundexisted in the various detailed analyses contained in the recent reports, and indeed how much was owed to thehard work which went into their compilation. It emphasised how much reform was already afoot. And ittestified to the reality that at the end of the day foreign policy was not about what you can afford to do somuch as about what you cannot afford not to do. Interdepartmentally it was regarded at the time as game, setand match to the FCO.

On the other hand, the White Paper was unduly orthodox and defensive. There was considerable feelingamong the younger members of the Diplomatic Service that there had been insufficient dispassionateexamination of the thornier issues raised by the Think Tank.

On the analytical plane, the White Paper contained weaknesses which proved to be the source of substantialsubsequent difficulty. These may be seen specifically to stem from two phrases: first, the surprising inclusionof the outmoded proposition that “foreign policy is about what has to be done and diplomacy is about how todo it”. Second, the assertion that “responsibility for the overall conduct of overseas in the broadest sense ofthe term will continue to be vested in a single Cabinet Minister, namely the Secretary of State from Foreign andCommonwealth Affairs, so that the right level of political co-ordination and input is maintained (italics mine)”.



The scope for misunderstanding in that remarkable sentence is plentiful. If responsibility “in the broadestsense” is to rest with a single Minister, it cannot be other than the Prime Minister. Below that level, theitalicised words suggest that the distribution of labour between the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary andhis or her Cabinet colleagues consists of the application of a presumably superior political judgment by theformer on the presumably non-political activities of other departments. A much more sophisticated rationalefor interdepartmental co-operation and co-ordination in the field of international affairs is required and has infact long been in place. It is also worth noting the use of the word “input”, rather than “output”. This impliesthat the prescription applies to the formulation of policy, as well as to its execution, and that diplomacy isabout what to do as well as how to do it.

FCO Vulnerabilities in fulfilling a demanding Role

The role envisaged for the Diplomatic Service in the 1978 White Paper is nothing if not demanding. Itrequires of the members of the Service collectively, and to some extent individually, a simultaneous grasp ofboth substance and process in the management of our international involvement as a whole. This has to manifestitself as a capacity both to accumulate a vast store of information, analysis, experience and reflection, and todeploy that accumulation usefully and quickly howsoever circumstances may dictate. This cannot be donesatisfactorily on the cheap.

It also requires that the FCO is beyond reproach as regards the comprehensiveness and objectivity of itsown perceptions. There is a balance to be struck in this regard. On the one hand a professional diplomaticcadre can be expected in general to eschew bias. On the other hand it would also be expected that greatDepartments of State, including the Foreign Office, would develop by dint of long years of experience a certainethos or tradition in handling our overseas business. While this is generally beneficial, it may lead to prioritiesout of tune with the times or the national temperament. Three examples may be given.

(1) The Commonwealth Lacuna

On its creation in 1968, the FCO was at pains to insist that there would be “no detraction from Britain’spartnership with her fellow members of the Commonwealth and her capacity to contribute to that partnership”.That is not how events transpired. The Commonwealth tended to slip below the radar screen. Expertise inCommonwealth affairs all but vanished. Interest in them dwindled. The priority of securing membership of theEEC, pervasive economic difficulties, and sharp intra-Commonwealth disagreements all played their part. Sodid Ministerial disenchantment. But even in combination these factors do not provide an adequate justificationfor overall institutional neglect. In one halcyon year the only context in which the word “Commonwealth”appeared in the FCO Annual Departmental Report was in the term “Foreign and Commonwealth Office”.

The Commonwealth is no sovereign remedy for all our ills. Yet it is a modest boon to its members and, in theUK case a distinct national asset, complementing, rather than competing with, other features of our internationalinvolvement. The Coalition Government have already given strong evidence of their declared intention to “putthe ‘C’ back into FCO”.

(2) At odds with “The Third World Coalition”

One of the most prominent characteristics of the post-war world has been the vast expansion of theinternational community, consequent upon the achievement of a large number of previously dependentcountries. Membership of the United Nations effectively quadrupled between 1945 and the end of the century.It was natural that these new members should find common cause and joint organisation in their commitmentto the imperatives of decolonisation, and development. This powerful trend, aptly described as ”the ThirdWorld Coalition”, found its chief expression successively in UNCTAD, the “New International EconomicOrder”, the “North/South Dialogue” and “Global Negotiations”.

For reasons which are hard to fathom, the FCO appeared ill at ease with all these manifestations of ThirdWorld Solidarity. Perhaps the difficulties stemmed from the misleading distinction, all too easily drawn inclassical diplomacy, between “political” and “economic”, and from an inadequate grasp of the intenselypolitical character of the approach of the developing countries to negotiations with the developed world onmatters which the latter generally regarded as “economic” or “social”. The crunch came in 1980 when theHouse of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee asked the Government’s views on the recently published BrandtCommission Report. The Commission was an imaginative effort to find common ground in a dialogue betweendeveloped and developing countries which was becoming increasingly unfruitful. It was a challenge which theFCO proved unable to meet. The FCO Memorandum of July, 1980, published in reply to the request of theForeign Affairs Committee, was roundly condemned on all sides.

The world has moved on. Not least under the influence of the Commonwealth, the emphasis has changedfrom inter-governmental negotiations between developed and developing countries to agreed internationalpriorities for improving the lot at the grass roots of the least fortunate of humankind, notably enshrined in theMillennium Goals and the concept of “good governance”. But the episode has had lasting effects on theinterdepartmental handling of development matters in Whitehall. As the Foreign Affairs Committee recentlynoted, of the 30 members of the OECD, only one other country than Britain—Germany—has a fully-fledged



ministry of international development, with all the others maintaining agencies or departments that in one wayor another fall under the authority of the foreign ministry”.

(3) Excessive Preoccupation with the European Union?

The FCO has long manifested what can be described as an institutional bias in favour of involvement in theEuropean Union. In general this is not difficult to understand. There is no doubt as to the importance of gainingentry into the EEC, notwithstanding the high price exacted from us by the French in particular for standingaloof at the outset. Les absents ont toujours tort. But even when we were inside rather than outside, and whenthere had been a marked improvement in both our economic fortunes and our national self-confidence, weseemed inhibited from fighting our corner as fully as the defence and promotion of our interests required. Theemphasis instead was tempering assertiveness or reluctance in the interest of “being at the heart of Europe”and of “full membership of the club”.

It was the persistent general advice from officials that Ministers should go along with what was beingproposed rather than seek to play for time and hope for something better. The upshot was acceptance ofcollective measures and rulings which went increasingly against the national grain. The culmination was thefoisting on the country by dubious means of the obviously flawed Lisbon Treaty. The backlash against thelatter, combined with the hardships of the severe recession which began in 2007, and of its aftermath, haveeffectively put a damper on any further EU integration, except, perhaps, in the context of the crisis grippingthe Eurozone.

Neglect of the Advisory Function

When discussing the nature or the extent of the ethos or the tradition of a great Department of State, it isimportant not to lose sight of the cardinal principle that it is Ministers, not officials, who make policy.Departments are often criticised for their actions when in fact they are quite properly carrying out instructionsfrom Ministers with which they may be out of sympathy. The criticism levelled at the Foreign Office over theappeasement of pre-war Nazi Germany is a case in point.

In the context of the Committee’s present inquiry, these examples of FCO vulnerability are less significantin themselves than as illustrations of the vital importance of discharging to the full the extensive advisoryresponsibilities of the Diplomatic Service. The vulnerabilities do not arise from any executive deficiency. Theyare about what to do rather than how to do it.

V Mr Straw’s White Paper of 2003: The Apotheosis of the Advisory Function

Much has happened since the publication of the 1978 White Paper. Internationally, the ending of the ColdWar has been a major benefit, even if it has brought problems as well as opportunities in its wake. The eventsof September 11, 2001, signalled the advent of a new phase of world wide interdependence, in whichinternational terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction emerged as potentially the greatestthreats to security.

The change of mindset required of the Diplomatic Service in order to manage this extraordinary transitioncan be compared to that which inspired the seminal Foreign Office reform of the first decade of the 20thcentury. It is encapsulated in the ground-breaking White Paper UK International Priorities—A Strategy for theFCO, launched in December, 2003, by the Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw. “For the first time”, Mr Strawexplained, “the Foreign and Commonwealth is publishing a comprehensive Strategy describing the UK’sinternational priorities and the FCO’s role in achieving them”. The White Paper noted that the FCO needed towork more closely with other Departments whose responsibilities covered important areas of internationalaction. “Our diplomacy will also increasingly involve people outside Government: Parliamentarians, business,the media, NGOs and interest groups”.

The formulation of the priorities is an object lesson in clarity, succinctness and comprehensiveness. Theemphasis was on flexibility and the capacity to adjust to changes in circumstances. The White Paper representedin truth the apotheosis of the advisory function, a perfect fusion between the executive and the advisorycomponents of diplomacy. The two are as inextricably mixed as are substance and process.

Modern Discontents:

(i) “sofa diplomacy”

Misgivings nonetheless persisted, but of a somewhat different character from those discussed in the Duncanand CPRS Reports. Chief among them were those related to the extent to which under the Blair and Brownadministrations the FCO was elbowed aside by a small group of advisers in No 10, and “sofa” or “bunker”diplomacy replaced the orthodox variety. The situation indeed bordered at times on the grotesque. The CoalitionGovernment has made good its promise to put an end to it.

But this does not imply that the Prime Minister will be less deeply involved in foreign affairs. The realitiesof interdependence mean that it could not be otherwise. There is an inevitable element of the presidential aboutmodern government, extending to external, as well as to internal, affairs. The Prime Minister is ex officio First



Lord of the Treasury, which is a useful reminder of his or her locus standi with that great Department of State.It might be helpful if some equivalent formulation could be found to reflect the Prime Minister’s position inthe case of the FCO.

(ii) “Managerialism”

A second clutch of criticisms relate to the perceived trend in the FCO, as in other Government Departmentstowards excessive emphasis on the management of business. There is a good deal of evidence to support thesecriticisms. Yet the point is not a simple one. In these days of near-ubiquitous “delivery deficit”, taxpayers aremore entitled than ever to look for value for money. This implies examination of outputs as well as inputs,and the adoption in some form of general criteria for measuring the results achieved against those whichwere expected.

But this does not justify the adoption by the FCO, in undiscriminating common with other GovernmentDepartments, of management tools and practices in conditions which can be so utterly different. Still less doesit apply if those tools and practices are imported from the private sector, in the belief that they are universallyapplicable in the public sector as well. In their Report on the FCO Annual Report 2008–09, the Foreign AffairsCommittee were forthright on the matter: “we have consistently questioned whether it is appropriate to have aset of performance indicators assessed in terms of detailed and sometimes quantified indicators”.

(iii) “Hollowing out of the FCO”

Third, and possibly the most serious, group of criticisms relates to the quality of advice offered by the FCO.It has the authority of Lord Hurd, the former Foreign Secretary. Before turning to politics he was a member ofthe Diplomatic Service and is almost uniquely qualified to express an opinion on the subject. He spoke of afeeling that the FCO was “hollowed” out on the advisory side, and was no longer characterised to the sameextent by the solid expertise for which it had previously been known.

There is a good deal of anecdotal evidence to support Lord Hurd’s view. While there may be no easyexplanation of how such a situation had arisen, it is a legitimate conjecture that it is the joint product of the“managerialism” already referred to and the chronic lack of resources allocated to the Diplomatic Service todischarge its great and growing tasks. When finances are stretched the advisory function is in the nature ofthings more likely to suffer than the executive.

VI The Stance of the Coalition Government: A Most Encouraging Prospect

In a speech on January 28 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Prime Minister described theinheritance of the Coalition Government on taking office: “an economy built on the worst deficit, the mostleveraged banks, the most indebted households, the biggest housing boom and unsustainable levels of publicspending and immigration”. The Coalition Government’s response has been Herculean. The series of statementsmade in October on National Security; The Strategic Defence and Security Review and The ComprehensiveSpending Review, and the ensuing FCO Business Plan are an awe-inspiring and highly encouraging road-mapfor extricating ourselves from a parlous situation.

Analytically, these texts represent, in a wider and more advanced form, a significant characteristic of MrStraw’s 2003 White Paper: namely thinking joined-up both “horizontally”—as between different aspects ofpolicy—and “vertically”—in the sense of grounding the individual aspects of policy in a general assessmentof national interest, disposition and cohesion. In spite of the painful choices they inevitably contain, the panoplyof measures announced inspire great confidence.

VII Conclusion

Three conclusions emerge from this historical survey of the rise of the advisory role of the DiplomaticService:

(1) the changes in the conduct, direction, priorities and resourcing of Diplomatic Service businessnecessary to respond to the transformation in world conditions have been so extensive and so profoundthat they cannot as yet be said to be fully reflected in current practice. Nor is this likely to be achievedin any near future. It is a matter of patient evolution, and the cultivation of a mindset very differentfrom that which is traditionally associated with the word “diplomacy”;

(2) it is beyond doubt that the Diplomatic Service is currently under-resourced. It is not to be expected,however, that this deficiency can be remedied while government expenditure is under the presentsevere restraints; and

(3) as soon as conditions permit, however, the situation described in (1) and (2) should be addressed bya further comprehensive review on the lines followed by the Plowden Committee. 2014, the 50thanniversary of the publication of the Plowden Report, might be a suitable date for the commencementof such a review.

I am conscious that in submitting this historical survey, even though it does not err on the side of brevity, ithas been necessary to compress the relevant material to the point where there is a danger of over simplification.



I am therefore attaching as background a memorandum of greater length which amplifies the analysis andcontains appropriate references to the relevant sources. It was prepared primarily in response to therecommendation by the previous Foreign Affairs Committee, in their Report on the FCO Annual Report2008–09, that “the new Government should carry out a comprehensive foreign policy-led review of thestructures, functions and priorities of the FCO, MOD and DFID”. I have already made this memorandumavailable to your highly competent and dedicated Committee staff.

Finally, as someone who is proud to have served in the Diplomatic Service for thirty-four years, I wouldobserve that the story of the growth of the advisory role of the Diplomatic Service is not one of grudgingresponse to outside criticism. Most of the impulse for reform has come from within. At the same time there isno claim to a monopoly of wisdom in the matter. Insights from outside are welcome. The motivation is notaggrandisement of the Service, but a concern to provide the nation in rapidly changing conditions with the bestpossible service in its extensive international involvement. The objective, as aptly described by the 1978 WhitePaper, is to “establish a pattern capable of adapting to the future on the basis of a realistic yet confidentassessment of Britain’s role in the world”. The Committee’s present inquiry will assuredly make a significantcontribution in this regard.

Memorandum from Sir Peter Marshall KCMG CVO

WHAT TO DO AS WELL AS HOW TO DO IT: THE RISE OF THE ADVISORY FUNCTION INBRITISH DIPLOMACY

Introduction

The concluding recommendation of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, in their Report onthe FCO Annual Report 2008–09, published on March 21, 2010, was that the new Government should “carryout a comprehensive foreign policy-led review of the structures, functions and priorities of the FCO, MODand DFID”.1 At the conclusion of five years of intense and fruitful involvement in both the substance and theprocess of British foreign policy, the members of the Committee were exceptionally well placed to make sucha recommendation.

It remains to be seen how HMG react to the recommendation. The foreground is in any case dominated bythe necessity of sharp cuts in government expenditure, from which the national diplomatic apparatus cannotexpect wholly to escape. What is clear is that the considerations and the issues underlying the recommendationwill not go away. They will need to be addressed in some manner. They extend to areas and questions whichmight seem remote to those unfamiliar with recent trends in the management of international relations. Theywill certainly engage the attention of the new House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. Analyticallyspeaking, the crux of the matter is that, although there have been profound changes in the executive role of theDiplomatic Service, the changes have been of even greater importance in its advisory role. The latter could besaid scarcely to have existed even a century ago. The history of the Diplomatic Service in the last hundredyears has in consequence turned to a great extent on the evolution of its advisory function.

The present memorandum begins by summarising the principal changes in diplomatic conditions since theoutbreak of the Great War in 1914, and especially since the adoption of the United Nations Charter at theconclusion of the Second World War in 1945. It then surveys the developments in British diplomatic prioritiesand practice which have occurred over the years in response to them, and to changes in the national situationand disposition which prompted those developments. The memorandum turns next to the problems judged tobe currently confronting the Diplomatic Service, especially in the form in which they were outlined in theReport of the out-going House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. Finally it comments briefly on theinitial stance of the Coalition Government on coming into power in May, 2010, to whom it will fall to addressthe Foreign Affairs Committee recommendation.

I Vectors in the Transformation of Diplomatic Conditions

Six inter-related factors or vectors—forces having both magnitude and direction—can be regarded as thechief agents of the transformation of “classical” diplomacy, which largely prevailed between the peace ofWestphalia at the end of the Thirty Years War in 1618 until the outbreak of the Great War, into the diplomaticconditions of the 21st century:

(i) an enormous increase world wide in the volume, complexity and intensity of diplomatic business,a reflection of the all-embracing qualitative change in cross-border activity from the market-basedinterdependence indicated by the use of the phrase “the world economy” to the omni-disciplinaryrealities of the “global village”;

(ii) a presumption of a general community of interest between states rather than a fatalistic acceptance ofthe inevitability of potential, if not actual, clash of interest between them;

(iii) the prominence of “values”, as well as interests, as conventionally and astringently understood in theuse of such terms as Realpolitik and raison d’etat. This is the concomitant of the shift of emphasis inpriorities in diplomatic business from national security against external threat on the one hand, topreoccupation with the security and welfare of the individual world wide on the other. Values applynot only between countries but also at every level within them;



(iv) a great rise in the number of diplomatic “actors”, non-governmental as well as governmental, and theaccompanying wide dispersal from national central authority of relevant decision-making. Thisdispersal has been both upward and downward, intranational and international, and de facto as wellas de jure. It is notably expressed in the concept of governance, as distinct from government, and in theimperfectly understood concept of supranationality, as distinct from state sovereignty and prerogative;

(v) intense public, and interactive, involvement in diplomatic business, to an extent made possible—andultimately inevitable—by the revolutions in information processing and dissemination, and by theassociated vast increase in the speed of worldwide communications; and

(vi) the vanishing distinction between internal and external affairs, and of the hitherto clear accepteddifference between the two, above all in sovereignty and jurisdictional terms. This distinction was thebedrock of the nation-state system which “classical” diplomacy was designed to serve.

Each of the vectors clearly merits intensive study on its own. Each is both a causal factor and a derivativeof its fellows. The whole is not so much the sum, as the product, of its wide-ranging parts. The total impacton the conduct of diplomatic business could not but be profound.2

II The Rise of the Advisory Function in the Framing of Foreign Policy

The proposition “foreign policy is about what to do; diplomacy is about how to do it” has long been familiar.It is growing increasingly misleading. It is of course a valuable reminder that, while it is one thing to deviseforeign policy, it is likely to be quite another to implement it. However the proposition can easily be taken tomean that diplomacy is in effect an executive business only. A hundred years ago this could perhaps have beenregarded as an essentially accurate depiction of the British way of doing things. Diplomats of Sir ErnestSatow’s generation served abroad only. While they could, and did, make recommendations at what should bedone, their emphasis was naturally on how they should do it.

This explains the structure and character of Satow’s magisterial Guide to Diplomatic Practice.3 Theunderlying assumption was that any necessary advice to the Secretary of State would be tendered from othersources. But the need for such advice was not regarded as self-evident. Foreign Office clerks, a separate breedfrom the diplomats, did not consider themselves obliged to offer advice on the papers which they shuffled onbehalf of the Secretary of State

Nonetheless there was at least an implicit advisory element in the reports and recommendations fromdiplomats serving overseas. In a world of slow-moving feudal agricultural societies, this could perhaps havebeen regarded as broadly sufficient. The Industrial Revolution, the advent of democracy, ever more rapidcommunications, the emergence of a world economy, and surging intra-European rivalries and tensions, allcombined to make any laid-back approach untenable.

(a) The “Inverted Sieve”

In the first decade of the 20th century a new system was introduced in the Foreign Office, whereby paperswere filtered upwards through the hierarchy, rather than passed downward from the top. The process was aptlydescribed as “the inverted sieve”. It was inherent that the upward filtering would be accompanied by commentand recommendation on the papers so filtered. At a stroke, the Foreign Office clerks became advisers in thepolicy-making process. “The days of the Foreign Office as a Department of scribes was past”.4

The principal moving spirit in this metamorphosis was Eyre Crowe, famous for his authorship in 1906 ofthe Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany.5 Originally labelled‘secret’, it was published the following year. It has stood ever since as a classical expose of the fundamentalsof British foreign policy, against which the particularities of individual aspects of policy needed to be measuredand judged. The practical worth of the reforms then being initiated could not have been more graphically ormore effectively illustrated.

(b) “Diplomacy in Fetters” (1944)

The multiple convulsions of the Great War infused the reform process with an urgency, which it mightotherwise have lacked, across the British machinery of government as a whole. As described in The ForeignOffice,6 the first official history, written by a former Chief Clerk and the Librarian, the post-war Foreign Officeemerges as an advice-oriented structure along lines familiar to those of a later generation.

But events were moving faster still. There had been a great expansion of the responsibilities of governmentin the field of economic management and social conditions; a vast increase in the volume and speed ofcommunications; a strident growth in the public content of foreign affairs and the extent to which public opinionhad to be wooed and shaped. Above all, and beneath all, the surge of interdependence, called increasingly inquestion both the realism of the classical concept of national sovereignty and the continued relevance ofnational boundaries.

Perhaps the most profound British analysis of the diplomatic implications of all these developments is thatcontained in Diplomacy in Fetters, by Sir Victor Wellesley, Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the ForeignOffice from 1925 to 1936, published in 1944.7 Wellesley’s thesis in essence was that democratic diplomacy



and foreign policy—“for all practical purposes they are one and inseparable”—in general no longer functionedeffectively because their background had changed while the machinery of diplomacy had remained static.Foreign policy could no longer be dealt with in a vacuum, and on a hand-to-mouth basis.

Wellesley contended that, so long as diplomatic practitioners thought in traditional terms, rather than takinginto account the full range of relevant factors—economic, industrial, technical, social, financial—as well as thepower of ideology and propaganda in shaping policy, diplomacy was in fetters. His book dealt in detail withthe way in which all these considerations needed to be reflected, not only in the experience, training andorganisation of diplomats, but also in the machinery of government as a whole and in the conduct ofparliamentary business.

III Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service, 1943: a Hint of mea culpa

The detail of Wellesley’s prescriptions cannot but seem somewhat over-elaborate. This, combined with hisrather discursive style, may explain why his pioneering work was not better known, even among theprofessionals of his day, let alone subsequently. But much of his thesis, at least as far as diplomatic organisationwas concerned, was contained in Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service, a White Paper submitted toParliament by the wartime Coalition Government in January, 1943.8 The mainspring of the proposals was theconviction that the process of amalgamation of hitherto separate services engaged in diplomatic work whichwas started at the end of the Great War needed to be completed. Specifically this involved the combining ofthe Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service with the Consular Service and the Commercial DiplomaticService to form a single Foreign Service.

“Among the criticisms which have been brought against the Diplomatic Service”, the White Paper states atthe outset, “the view has been expressed that it is recruited from too small a circle, that it tends to representthe interests of certain sections of the nation rather than those of the country as a whole, that its members leadtoo sheltered a life, that they have insufficient understanding of economic and social questions, that the extentof their experience is too small to enable them properly to understand many of the problems with which theyought to deal, and that the range of their contacts is too limited to allow them to acquire more than a relativelynarrow acquaintance with the foreign peoples amongst whom they live”.9

That the message in this wide-ranging critique was received and understood in substance within the ForeignOffice is reflected in the proposals outlined later in the White Paper. In brief, these aim at the creation of acomprehensively-trained body of generalists, capable of serving all over the world, drawn from a wider socialbackground than previously, administered on a basis adequate to modern requirements, and able to provideappropriate opportunities to individual members of the Service. The proposed reforms involved both aconsiderable increase in numbers and a significant rise in expenditure.

The White Paper naturally does not accept the critique wholly without demur. It claims that it arises in partfrom a misunderstanding of the role of the Diplomatic Service. “The diplomat must be able to keep HMGinformed of developments which may affect their foreign policy, submitting his observations and advice, whichmay or may not be accepted. While a diplomat may therefore be able to influence foreign policy by his reports,he does not finally determine it. That is the task of the Cabinet”.10 The inwardness of this proposition at thetime was that the Foreign Office was widely, and to a great extent unjustly, held to be the principal source ofthe policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany, which was popular enough at the outset, but was denouncedviolently as its failure became apparent. Neither for the first time, nor for the last time, the Foreign Office wastaking the blame for a distasteful government policy which it was doing its best loyally to discharge.

The Foreign Office (1955): locus classicus

While the 1943 White Paper observes the constitutional niceties in setting out the distribution of labour inthe shaping of foreign policy between the Cabinet and diplomats abroad, it does not deal with the input of theofficials working in the Foreign Office, without which coverage of the diplomat’s advisory role could scarcelybe said to be complete.

As explained earlier, the act of submitting papers for the attention of the Secretary of State, even on aminimalist interpretation of the duties of the staff of the Foreign Office, contains an element of the advisory.Substantive comment on the papers submitted obviously enhances that element. It is no less clear that whetherthe recommendations of diplomats serving abroad are accepted or not may turn largely on the comment offeredby officials in the Foreign Office. The latter naturally draw on a wider range of relevant considerations andfactors than those to which a diplomat in a post abroad could normally be expected to have access. ForeignOffice comment would also be based on a closer awareness of the situation, both domestic and international,in which the Secretary of State finds himself. It is obviously counterproductive to urge upon him lines of actionwhich, however advantageous in terms of foreign policy objectives, are politically impossible for him to pursue.

Indeed the advisory boot is on the other foot, in the sense that policy recommendations may come morereadily and acceptably from those responsible for offering comment in the Foreign Office than from thoseabroad, because of the greater familiarity of the former with the picture as a whole. Especially is this the caseif the policy recommended is autonomous or “active”, rather than reactive to developments elsewhere.



All this emerged with crystal clarity in The Foreign Office (1955) by Lord Strang and “other members ofthe Foreign Service”, a volume in the New Whitehall Series, prepared under the auspices of the Royal Instituteof Public Administration, as the successor to the earlier Whitehall Series which included The Foreign Office(1933). Written both from the inside and from the top, this invaluable work is not only a mine of informationand insight; it is also an object lesson in the how to explain clearly, cogently and with a vein of restrainedhumour, altogether typical of Strang himself, matters which are both arcane and complex. To add to its greatservice, it reproduces in full the text of the 1943 White Paper. It is prudently dedicated “to Sir Anthony Edenwho launched the reforms of 1943 and to the late Ernest Bevin who put them to effect”.11

Strang, assuredly one of the most scholarly occupants of the Permanent Under-Secretary’s chair, emphasisesat the outset that “it is much easier to describe what the Foreign Office is than to state what it does”. He wasat pains to explain why the Foreign Service had grown so greatly in recent years. It is highly instructive tocompare the respective organograms in 1933 and 1955. In the case of the former, there were 14 Departments,and the Secretary of State was assisted by one Ministerial colleague. In 1955 there were 40 Departments, andthe Secretary of State had four Ministerial colleagues. An Appendix on the Departmental Allocation of Workin the 1955 volume briefly describes the functions of each of the forty Departments. In 28 cases the descriptionbegins with the words “advise the Secretary of State on …” As Strang put it in a later work, “essentially[members of the Foreign Service] help their Foreign Secretary to reach his decisions and then help him tocarry them out”.12

IV The Plowden Report, 1964: Diplomatic Apogee and Witness to Fundamental Change

The “Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service” contained in the 1943 White Paper were both radicaland imaginative. They were also of necessity outlined only briefly in the White Paper itself. They carried withthem the specific warning that the cost of their implementation would be substantial. It was natural thereforethat putting them into effect would encounter a number of problems. The latter fell into two broad categories.In the first was improvement of the conditions of service of the members of the Foreign Service, includingrecruitment, training, career management and development and the provision for early retirement, where thiswas deemed to be in the public interest. Dispositions in this regard had not proved to be wholly commensuratewith the objective of creating a service drawn from a wider background and fully open to those without privatefinancial resources.

In the second category was the nature of the task which members of the Foreign Service were expected tofulfil. It proved in the event to be greatly different from that envisaged in 1943, both as regards the prevailinginternational circumstances and by virtue of our chronic post-war relative economic weakness. Beyond thesetwo categories there loomed the vexed questions of interdepartmental division of labour in Whitehall and themachinery of government for the management of international affairs. There was a growing question markover the realism of the 1943 assumption that the Foreign Service should be trained and equipped so as tobe able to implement government policies generally, even where these might be largely in the bailiwick ofother Departments.

A particular point of criticism, not least in the Commonwealth, was the existence of an increasinglyanomalous separate Commonwealth Relations Office, the uneasy post-war amalgam of the former DominionsOffice and India Office.

The Foreign Office case for a review was eventually accepted, but with significant widening of the mandate.In July, 1962, the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, appointed a high level Committee on RepresentationalServices Overseas, under the chairmanship of Lord Plowden, an eminent business man and public servant. TheCommittee’s terms of reference were “to review the purpose, structure and operation of the services responsiblefor representing the interests of the UK government overseas, both in Commonwealth and foreign countries,and to make recommendations, having regard to changes in political social and economic circumstances in thiscountry and overseas”. The Treasury insisted on the appointment of one of their officials as a joint Secretaryof the Committee.

The Committee’s Report was presented to Parliament in February, 1964.13 It is a superb analytical andprescriptive achievement. Its simultaneous mastery of the big picture and of operational and administrativedetail gives it an authority that attaches to no other document on the subject. It at once endorsed the case forreview: “the world in which the overseas Services now have to operate is no longer the world of 1943 or evena world which could be foreseen in 1943….We therefore begin our report with an attempt to assess theconsequences for our overseas services of the changes in the national and international scene which haveoccurred in the last 20 years or so and those further changes which can reasonably be expected”.

The Committee drew three main conclusions from this survey. First, while there had been a clear decline inBritain’s relative military and economic strength, “it was in our interest and in the general interest that Britain’svoice should continue to be heard”. For this to be achieved “we shall require to make the best possible use of‘diplomacy’ and ‘persuasion’. What we can no longer ensure by power alone, we must secure by other means”.Secondly, in this task “our ‘diplomatic’ Services have an indispensable part to play. The strength and qualityof their performance must be fully maintained”. The present scale of their activities, however, “ought not, inthe aggregate, to be greatly exceeded”. Thirdly, “while economic and political motives intertwine throughout



our foreign policy and have always done so, economic and commercial work has now assumed a position offundamental importance. It must be regarded as a first charge on the resources of the overseas services”.14

The Committee described the main tasks on which the overseas Services were engaged as:

(a) advising HMG on every aspect of foreign policy;

(b) negotiation;

(c) cultivation of friendly relations;

(d) trade promotion;

(e) information—explaining and getting acceptance of British policies;

(f) protection of British persons and interests, and

(g) aid and technical assistance.

This list broke new ground as regards the public explanation of the work of the overseas services. It was aconvincing demonstration of the way in which conditions had changed since 1943. It underlined Strang’sobservation that it is easier to describe what we are than to state what we do. Most significant of all, perhaps,it put “advising HMG” at the top of the list of functions. That is a far cry indeed from nineteenth centurydiplomacy.

In pursuit of this profound analysis of the tasks, the Committee made a large number of detailedrecommendations for improvement both in the conditions of service of members of the overseas services andin their management. In the general administrative field, the Committee’s principal proposal was that a unifiedService should be created out of the hitherto separate Foreign Service, Commonwealth Service and TradeCommission Service, to be known as “HM Diplomatic Service”. The Committee stopped short ofrecommending the immediate amalgamation of the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office, butsuggested instead that the two Departments should be administered jointly by a Diplomatic ServiceAdministration Office.

Apogee or Counsel of Perfection?

The Plowden Report represents the apogee of review of the “purpose, structure and operation” of Britishdiplomacy. Forty years on, does it retain its practical validity, or should it be thought of as a counsel ofperfection? The diplomatic answer to the question is “both”. On the one hand, the Committee were undoubtedlyright in basing their Report on the assumption that we wish as a people to continue to be actively involvedinternationally. A substantial diplomatic apparatus is essential to such involvement. The Report does a jobsecond to none in elaborating that requirement. On the other hand, the fundamental change in internationalconditions described in the first section of this memorandum would seem to demand a greater flexibility inassessing both what we should be seeking to do and the means by which we should aim to get things done—including by non-official or non-governmental means.15

In the nature of politics, this is not a matter likely to be settled solely on its objective merits. Events are aptto take control. The Plowden Report appeared in the closing days of a long period of Conservative Government.Its aftermath coincided with a growing awareness of the unpleasant realities of continuing British economicweakness, as well as de Gaulle’s imperious veto of our first, already belated, bid to join the European EconomicCommunity. The issue thus was not so much the failure of the Diplomatic Service to adapt to meet its tasks,about which Wellesley had agonised twenty years previously, and which had prompted the 1943 Reforms.Rather there was an uneasy feeling that the apparatus was altogether too big and ambitious for a country whosepolitical and economic influence had declined. The reaction to the Plowden Report was not long in coming.

V Diminished National Self-Confidence: Duncan and the Think Tank

In a speech at West Point on December 5, 1962, Dean Acheson, a former US Secretary of State, deliveredwhat is probably the best-known verdict on British foreign policy since the end of the Second World War:“Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role”.16 This waspish observation was ill-received at thetime, not least because it was uncomfortably near the truth. There seemed to be no let up in our post-waradversities. The in-coming Labour Government in 1964 was beset with problems from the outset. A furtherdevaluation of sterling seemed inevitable, and eventually occurred in November, 1967. The UK launched itssecond bid to join the EEC in the autumn of that year. It was similarly rebuffed by de Gaulle. In January, 1968,the Government announced its military withdrawal from East of Suez.

The Duncan Committee

Such was the background to the appointment in August, 1968, by the Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart,“with the agreement of the Prime Minister (Harold Wilson), and other Ministers concerned”, of a furthercommittee of enquiry under the chairmanship of Sir Val Duncan, a leading industrialist. It was entitled “TheReview Committee on Overseas Representation”, the difference in terminology, as compared to the PlowdenCommittee, betokening an emphasis on the situation at home as well as abroad.



The terms of reference were at once more elaborate and more urgent than those of the Plowden Committee.The avowed purpose was to save money. It is also relevant that a few months earlier the Report of the FultonCommittee on the Home Civil Service had been published.17 This contained some very sharp criticisms,particularly in relation to alleged failure to adapt sufficiently to the requirements of the twentieth century andto excessive allegiance to the “philosophy of the amateur (or ‘generalist’ or ‘all rounder’)”. While not directedat the Diplomatic Service, which was outside the Committee’s terms of reference, these strictures werenonetheless held to apply in some measure to it.

Wide though they were, the Duncan Committee interpreted their terms of reference even more widely, toinclude all activities financed out of public funds which were concerned with the conduct of British externalrelations, including the British Council and the External Services of the BBC. The Duncan Committee classifiedthe main types of work “involved in overseas representation” as:

(a) the handling of intergovernmental relations;

(b) advice on foreign policy;

(c) advising and helping British subjects, overseas or in an overseas context;

(d) reporting;

(e) influencing overseas opinion;

(f) processing potential travellers to Britain, and

(g) self-administration.

The Report of the Committee was published in July, 1969.18 Its focus was the relative decline in Britain’sposition. While much of it covers detailed ground already well trodden by the Plowden Committee, what theReport had to say on the big picture was nothing if not novel. We were now “a major power of the second rank”.

It accordingly suggested that our representational effort should be focussed on what it called “the Area ofConcentration”—“a dozen or so countries of Western Europe plus the United States”—and that other countriesshould be regarded as belonging to the “Outer Area”, where our interests were largely commercial. The SovietUnion, China, Japan, India and all the major developing countries, to speak nothing of the world’s neuralgictrouble spots, were thus relegated to relative darkness. Even at the time, the Committee’s proposal seemedbizarre. The tide of world wide interdependence was already rising strongly. It soon swept the notion away.

The CPRS Review

On receipt of the Duncan Report, the Labour Government indicated that it expected to be guided by themain body of its recommendations. In the event the aftermath of the Report was dominated by sustained,intense and ultimately successful British diplomatic efforts to join the European Economic Community. Themomentum of these efforts was increased with the return of a Conservative Government in 1970. Enlargementof the EEC formally took effect on January 1, 1973. The European dimension, combined with the Labour’sreturn to power in 1974, and renewed economic difficulties (the UK borrowed heavily from the IMF in 1976),prompted a further inquiry into overseas representation.

In January, 1976, James Callaghan, then Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary asked Sir Kenneth Berrill, theHead of the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), to undertake a review with the following terms of reference:

“to review the nature and extent of our overseas interests and requirements and in the light of thatreview to make recommendations on the most suitable, effective and economic means of representing andpromoting those interests both at home and overseas. The review will embrace all aspects of the work ofoverseas representation, including political, economic, commercial, consular and immigration work,defence matters, overseas aid and cultural and information activities, whether these tasks are performedby members of HM Diplomatic Service, by members of the Home Civil Service, by members of theArmed Forces or by other agencies supported financially by HMG”.

The mandate of the “Think Tank” was thus wider even than that of the Duncan Committee. The CPRSpursued it with exemplary thoroughness, as is illustrated by their massive Report, published in August, 1977.19

Although the pressure to save money was primarily short term, their perspective was long term. They wereacutely conscious of the way in which British economic performance had fallen behind that of broadlycomparable European countries. They considered how far the experience of those countries could be taken asa guide. They took note of the scope for improvement in our fortunes once North Sea oil started to comeon stream.

The CPRS identified four main objectives for the UK overseas: to ensure its external security; to promoteeconomic and social wellbeing; to honour certain commitments and obligations (eg to the dependent territoriesor to individual citizens of its own or other countries); and to work for a peaceful and just world. Against thisbackground, they identified and analysed in turn 14 “separate functions which together make up overseasrepresentation”:

— economic, social and environmental work;

— export services;

— foreign policy work (UK involvement in international political concerns and activities)



— defence work;

— consular services;

— control of entry into the UK;

— administration of overseas aid;

— educational and cultural work;

— external broadcasting;

— information work;

— political work (ie bilateral political relations and analysis);

— communications;

— entertainment, and

— accommodation and other administration overseas.

All these functions were, in the view of the CPRS, valid objects of public expenditure. Yet in most of themthe CPRS thought that less work should be done, or that it should be done more selectively. The reasons forthis judgment were various: the effectiveness of the function was overestimated; insufficient account was takenof the changed position of the UK in the world; or the functions could be left to others, eg the private sector.In many cases work was “being done to an unjustifiably high standard”. In others it could be done by staff athome rather than resident overseas.

The CPRS reserved their most radical recommendations for matters of organisation and staffing. Thereshould be a general downgrading of jobs in the Diplomatic Service, “which in our view tends to err on theside of perfectionism”. They noted that a total of 30 posts had been closed since the publication of the DuncanReport. They thought that a further 20 diplomatic posts and at least 35 subordinate posts should follow. Theyput forward as options (i) there should much more interchange between the Home Civil Service and theDiplomatic Service; (ii) a specialist export promotion service and a specialist aid administration should becreated within the former; (iii) there should be a merger of the Home Civil Service and the Diplomatic Serviceand the creation within the combined service of a Foreign Service Group to handle the bulk of the fourteenfunctions identified.

The CPRS went on to canvass the abolition of the British Council, with a redistribution of its businessbetween the Ministry of Overseas Development and the Department of Education and Science. As regards theBBC, the main objective of external broadcasting was “to provide an unbiased service of world news andinformation. Conveying information about Britain and its culture should have a lower priority as an objective”.Hence the time had come for a radical look at present broadcasting patterns. The provision of a universalservice, covering areas well supplied with their own unbiased sources of news and information, wasunnecessary.

VI The Value, and the Limitations, of Expert Scrutiny: what you cannot afford not to do

Rereading these three Reports inspires a number of reactions: admiration and gratitude for the hard workand the expertise, not only of those conducting the inquiries, but also of the numerous and wide-rangingauthorities whom the Plowden and Duncan Committees and the CPRS consulted during the course of theirrespective labours; consciousness of the extent of the common ground between the three Reports; a healthyrespect for the conciseness of the texts and for the consequent difficulty of summarising them, rather thanquoting them in extenso; and a certain sympathy for the Duncan Committee and the CPRS for the pressureson them caused by their “loaded” term of reference, namely to save money, rather than to look primarily atthe merits of the case.

The differences between the three reports are perhaps less those of analysis than of stance. At the end of theday the scale of national diplomatic effort is a matter not of what you can afford to do so much as of what youcannot afford not to do. The overwhelming impression is that events, shaped by the vectors described at theoutset of this memorandum, have robbed the distinction between the advisory and the executive functions indiplomacy of any real practical, as opposed to analytical, significance. The two are inextricably interwoven, asare substance and process, in the business of a diplomatic service in an interdependent world.20

The dangers of concentrating on “how to do it” rather than “what to do”

The growth in complexity and volume of that business is likewise depriving of any practical value theproposition that foreign affairs is about what to do and diplomacy is how to do it. Adherence to the propositioncould constitute a growing threat to diplomatic competence. It can encourage the fatal assumption that thenature of the duties of the Diplomatic Service obviates the need to acquire mastery of the substance of thebusiness to be discharged, as distinct from a grasp of the executive techniques involved in the conduct ofbusiness.21



VII The 1978 White Paper: Champion of the Status Quo or Harbinger of Decline?

Had they not launched great salvoes at the British Council and the BBC, the Think Tank might have achievedgreater success in securing the adoption not only of their specific recommendations, but also of the generaltenor of their Report. But the sum total of their prescriptions went beyond what the market would bear. InAugust, 1978, in the closing months of his administration, James Callaghan, by now Prime Minister, and theForeign Secretary, Dr David (now Lord) Owen, presented to Parliament a White Paper The United Kingdom’sOverseas Representation.22

While it was primarily a riposte to the more radical Think Tank recommendations, the White Paper alsoaddressed a number of reports from various House of Commons Committees. Many of the less controversialCPRS proposals were accepted or noted as already representing current practice. The general survey at theoutset showed how much common ground existed on assessment of the United Kingdom’s international positionand interests, and on the role of the Diplomatic Service. The White Paper concluded (in paragraph 68) withthe oft-quoted statement that “responsibility for the overall conduct of overseas relations in the broadest senseof the term will continue to be vested in a single Cabinet Minister, namely the Secretary of State for Foreignand Commonwealth Affairs”.

Analytical Aspects of the 1978 White Paper

At the time the White Paper was regarded as game, set and match to the FCO, a fair observation in thepolitical or interdepartmental circumstances then prevailing. But the victory was also perceived as pyrrhic.There was considerable feeling among younger members of the Diplomatic Service that there had beeninsufficient dispassionate examination of the thornier issues raised by the Think Tank.

On an analytical plane, the White Paper contained weaknesses which proved to be the source of considerablesubsequent difficulties. These may be seen specifically to originate in two phrases: first, the reiteration inparagraph 8 of the White Paper of the familiar and misleading proposition that “foreign policy is about whathas to be done; diplomacy is about how to do it”; and secondly, the virtually unknown concluding words ofthe formulation, already referred to, on responsibility for the conduct of foreign relations resting with theForeign and Commonwealth Secretary, namely “so that the right level of political co-operation and input ismaintained”(my italics).23

As regards the first phrase, it is a matter of surprise, after all the detailed discussion of the functions of theDiplomatic Service in the three Reports described above, to find in the Government’s response a reiteration ofa proposition so obviously out of line with current realities. Even when full allowance is made for observingthe constitutional proprieties of the division of responsibilities between Ministers and officials, it makes littlesense to suggest that foreign policy is one thing and diplomacy another. The two are inextricably mixed, as arethe advisory and executive functions, a point which Strang emphasised in his description of the work of theDiplomatic Service quoted above.

Diplomacy is about what to do, as well as how to do it

Diplomacy is about what to do, and about the reasons for doing it, as well as about how to do it. If it werethe latter only, if it were an executive and not an advisory business, what would be the rationale for insistingthat “responsibility for the conduct of overseas relations in the broadest sense” must rest with a single Minister?Would that responsibility not have to be defined as something separate from diplomacy? Only if what to do,as well as how to do it, is an integral part of the equation, does the White Paper’s contention hold good.

“Maintaining the right Level of political Co-operation and Input”

The contention is in any case directly contradicted by the second phrase, as found in paragraph 68 of theWhite Paper. It is noteworthy that the phrase ends with the word “input”, rather than “output”. This impliesparticipation in the conduct of foreign policy at an earlier stage than implementation. It is an advisory ratherthan an executive concept. This anomaly apart, it is the phrase as a whole which needs deconstruction.

The concept of maintaining “the right level of political co-operation and input” is a ripe source of confusion:(i) can the “right” level of any component of our international involvement be determined by a single minister?Is it not at the end of the day a collective matter, in which the Prime Minister must have a decisive say? (ii)using the adjective “political” in this context encourages the outdated assumption that the external business ofother departments is somehow “non-political”, over which “political” considerations, of which the FCO iscustodian, should have priority. The complexities of worldwide interdependence require a more sophisticatedapproach to interdepartmental co-ordination: (iii) what does the term “co-operation” mean in this context?Does it apply internally, ie within the national administration, to interdepartmental relations and co-ordination,or externally, ie to our relations with other countries bilaterally or multilaterally, not least as regards ourcontractual obligations to them? Or to both?



The “Foreignness” and “Affairishness” of Foreign Affairs

If the FCO is to have the sort of role envisaged in the 1978 White Paper, it cannot be by virtue of theapplication of a simple international “political” corrective to the “non-political” desiderata of other departments.It must be grounded in greater analytical rigour.

Foreign affairs by definition have two characteristics: on the one hand they are affairs, matters of substanceand often highly complex, and will as such often lie within the sphere of responsibility of government entitiesother than the FCO; on the other, they are foreign, and thus have a dimension which differentiates them frominternal affairs, and links them with other international concerns. In consequence they require differenthandling. Those who are responsible for content or “affairishness” may not be familiar with the foreign milieuin which the issues need to be pursued. Responsibility for their “foreignness” can best lie where there is greaterfamiliar with the milieu, ie with the Diplomatic Service.

The two characteristics, between which, in the nature of things, there can be no clear-cut dividing line, needto be studied in relation to one another and kept synoptically in view from the earliest stage in the policy-making process and continuously thereafter. In today’s conditions, where almost anything can affect almosteverything, it is clear that the task of harmonisation is one of considerable complexity. It is not so much a matterof interdepartmental co-ordination as of interdepartmental dialogue, or even of interdepartmental dialectic.

What the 1978 White Paper demands of the Diplomatic Service

The role envisaged for the FCO in the 1978 White Paper is a further illustration of Strang’s observation thatit is easier to describe what we are than to state what we do. It is clear that fulfilling the role adequatelydemands of the Diplomatic Service collectively the capacity both to accumulate a vast assembly of information,analysis and experience and reflection, and to be able to deploy that accumulation usefully and quickly whencircumstances require. The deployment, moreover, has to be a la carte rather than table d’ hote: There is noset of rules to be applied regardless of circumstances.

Relations with the Cabinet Office, the Department for International Development, the Ministry of Defenceand the Home Office each have a particular complexity, be it for reasons of general co-ordination, developmentco-operation, national security and human rights—those both of UK nationals and of foreign nationals—respectively. No interdepartmental relations are more important than those with the Treasury, with their centraland vital responsibility in matters of financial and economic policy. They are moreover the paymasters of theDiplomatic Service.

The demanding role envisaged for the Diplomatic Service also requires that the FCO itself is beyond reproachas regards both the comprehensiveness and the objectivity of its own perceptions. In general the record isregarded, with good reason, as satisfactory on this score. But there are three curious faults at differing pointsthe scale of priority of national interest.

FCO Vulnerabilities:

(a) The Commonwealth Lacuna

The first of these is chronic neglect of the Commonwealth as a factor in our international involvement as awhole. During its relatively short existence, the Commonwealth Relations Office was widely regarded as thecause of excessive preoccupation, amid all our other problems, with Commonwealth issues at the expense ofthe priorities of building our post-imperial future It was inevitable, therefore, that the absorption in 1968 ofthe Commonwealth Office (itself a 1966 amalgam of the CRO with the Colonial Office) within the ForeignOffice would result in a lessening of official attention directed to Commonwealth matters.

Concern to dispel misgivings on this score underlay the publication on October 17, 1968, of The Merger ofthe Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office, 1968.24 Describing itself as a “Background Paper”, thisrelatively brief, but highly informative and thoughtful, note combines a rationale for the merger, on the basisof the history of the previously separate Departments, with details of how to ensure that “there should be nodetraction from Britain’s partnership with her fellow members of the Commonwealth and her capacity tocontribute to that partnership”.

It is difficult to reconcile the good intentions expressed in the Background Paper with the course of eventsin the ensuing 40 years. The Commonwealth has tended to slip below the FCO radar screen. Expertise inCommonwealth affairs has all but vanished. Interest in them has dwindled. The priority of securing membershipof the EEC, pervasive UK economic difficulties, and sharp intra-Commonwealth disagreements over thesituation in Southern Africa all played their part. So did Ministerial disenchantment. But such factors do notprovide an adequate justification for overall institutional neglect. In one halcyon year, the only context in whichthe word “Commonwealth” appeared in the FCO Annual Departmental Report was in the term ”Foreign andCommonwealth Office”.

The Commonwealth is no sovereign remedy for all our ills. Yet it is a modest boon to its members generallyand, in the UK case, a distinctive national asset, complementing, rather than competing with, other features ofour international involvement. It is an under-performing asset. The present government have expressed theirintention to “put the ‘C’ back into FCO”.



(b) “The Third World Coalition”

One of the most prominent characteristics of the post war world has been the enormous expansion of theinternational community, consequent upon the achievement of independence by a number of previouslydependent countries Membership of the United Nations effectively quadrupled between 1945 and the end ofthe century. It was entirely natural that these new members should find common cause and joint organisationin their loyalty to the imperatives of decolonisation and development.

The first of a number of overlapping manifestations of this “Third World Coalition”, as it has been aptlydescribed,25 was the Non-aligned Movement, in which Jawaharlal Nehru played a leading part. As its nameimplied, its principal concern was to avoid involvement in the Cold War. UNCTAD (United Nations Conferenceon Trade and Development) was primarily concerned with rectifying the perceived inequities in the conditionsof participation in world trade.26 This was followed by the quest in the UN General Assembly for a NewInternational Economic Order, in the wake of the oil and convertibility crises of the early 1970s, with acombined economic and political agenda.27

For reasons which still seem hard to fathom, the FCO appeared ill at ease with these manifestations of thirdworld solidarity. Perhaps the difficulties stemmed from the misleading distinction, all too easily drawn inclassical diplomacy, between “political” and “economic”, and from an inadequate grasp of the intenselypolitical character of the approach of the developing countries to negotiations with the developed world onmatters which the latter regarded as “economic” or “social”. This was reinforced by a feeling that responsibilityfor the substance of such “economic” or “social” issues, however political the context in which they wereraised, lay with other departments, mainly the Treasury, the Board of Trade or the particular organ ofgovernment, whether independent or not, in charge of overseas development.

The crunch came in 1980 when the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons asked for thegovernment’s views on the recently published Brandt Commission Report.28 The Commission and its Reportwere an imaginative effort to find common ground in a dialogue between the developed and the developingcountries which seemed to become increasingly unfruitful. It was a challenge to conventional thinking in thedeveloped countries, and to the capacity harmoniously and beneficially to accommodate burgeoninginterdependence. It was also a challenge which the FCO proved incapable of meeting satisfactorily. The FCOmemorandum of July, 1980, published in reply to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s request, was devastatinglycriticised in all sections of the British press. The Sunday Times, not generally known for a bleeding heart,described the memorandum as “one if the shoddiest documents ever produced by a British Government”.29

The episode could scarcely qualify as a validation of the FCO’s claim to ensure that “the right level ofpolitical co-ordination and input is maintained”. It had lasting effects on the interdepartmental handling ofdevelopment matters. As the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee recently noted, “among the 30Member States of the OECD only one other—Germany—has a fully-fledged ministry of internationaldevelopment, with all the others maintaining agencies or departments that in one way or another fall underthe authority of the foreign ministry”.30 The ever-widening concept of “development” in twenty-first centuryinterdependence, and a similar growth in the notion of “security”, to the point where the two in practice tend tooverlap, strengthen the case for a re-examination of the current interdepartmental distribution of responsibilities.

(c) An EU Fixation?

At the top end of the UK scale of international priorities, the FCO has long manifested what could beregarded as an institutional bias in favour of involvement in the European Union. There can be no doubt as tothe importance of securing entry into the EEC, notwithstanding the high price which was exacted from us bythe French in particular for standing aloof at the outset. Les absents ont toujours tort. But even when we wereinside rather than outside, we were seemingly still inhibited from fighting our corner as fully as the defenceand promotion of our national interest required. The emphasis instead was on “being at the heart of Europe”and on “full membership of the club”. There also seemed to be some failure to grasp and exploit both the greatimprovement in our relative economic situation, and the revival of national self-confidence, which began withMrs Thatcher’s tenure of the Prime Ministership from 1979.

It was the persistent general advice of the officials responsible for EU policy that Ministers should go alongwith what was proposed, rather than “adopting the posture of an ostrich, and hoping we will not have to makedifficult choices”, with the result that “we end up with having to make the said choices but in less favourableconditions”.31 Hence the firm public advocacy by retired members of the Diplomatic Service, and others,successively of the Euro, the Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty.32

Although it obviously went against the national grain, an argument could be advanced for submitting theConstitutional Treaty for approval of the electorate by means of a referendum. There was however no suchjustification for pressing the Lisbon Treaty on the voters without a referendum, on the pretence that it wasmaterially different from its rejected predecessor.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Nowhere does the writ of the Law of Unintended Consequences run more freely than in the field of foreignaffairs. The Lisbon Treaty, by virtue both of its flawed content and of the unworthy means to which EU member



governments resorted in order to secure its adoption, has proved exquisitely counterproductive. Disillusion hasbeen widespread, not only with the outcome of the Treaty itself, but also with the process of EU treaty-makingas a whole, and hence with the “community method” of doing business which is at its heart. As a result, thechosen pathway to political union, far from being kept open by the Treaty, has been effectively blocked. Thetide of centralisation is receding. Never have the Union’s institutions been more remote from the voters. Ayawning democratic gap has opened up. Closing it is essential to the meaningful development of theEuropean Union.

At the executive level, the Lisbon Treaty has similarly failed to yield the advantages claimed for it. The postof President of the European Council has been variously represented as that of an internal fixer and that of ahigh profile international figure able to stop the traffic in major world capitals, a “President of Europe”, in fact,rather than a President of the European Council. To date the principal outcome has been wholly predictablerivalry with the responsibilities of the President of the Commission. The new combined post of HighRepresentative for foreign affairs has likewise got off to a slow start, and is harassed by a similar varietyof expectations.

The Commission, following on the understanding reached by the European Council with the IrishGovernment to enable the latter to secure a positive result in a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, isnow to be composed indefinitely of one Commissioner per member state. It has thus become a mini-assemblyinstead of the compact executive which the authors of the original Treaty of Rome intended.33 The raisond’etre of the Commission, as a body vested with much greater powers than those of a standard secretariat ofan intergovernmental organisation, has been called seriously in question. The element of turf war, actual andpotential, between the Union’s institutions has been increased by the enhanced powers conferred by the Treatyon the European Parliament.

The European Union is not a zero-sum game, either among the institutions themselves or as between theinstitutions and the governments and peoples of the member states. When the EU underperforms, we are allthe losers. The remedy does not lie in further institution-mongering, but in reducing the delivery deficit byconcentrating on the substantive tasks—on which there is a wide measure of agreement—and in reconnectingwith the disillusioned electorates.

VIII The FCO White Paper of 2003: The Apotheosis of the Advisory Function

To pause for a moment in recapitulation, study of the evolution of diplomacy in the last hundred years hasmanifested a transition from the quasi-technical proposition that foreign policy is about what to do anddiplomacy is about how to do it, to the realisation that diplomacy is irrevocably about what to do as well asabout how to do it. The advisory and the executive functions coalesce. That coalescence reaches inevitablyinto the very wide-ranging question of the rationale of our international involvement as a whole, governmentaland non-governmental, official and non-official. This in turn puts in a new and more complicated context thequestion of what is demanded of the British Diplomatic Service collectively and organisationally, and what isrequired in consequence as regards the acquisition of the necessary skills and experience of its membersindividually.

What faces the Diplomatic Service today is largely the product of the forces—or vectors—described in thefirst section of this memorandum: the enormous increase in the volume, complexity and intensity of diplomaticbusiness; the perception of a common interest among nations rather than an assumption of inevitable rivalry,with the possibilities for co-operation opened up thereby; the advent centre-stage of values along side interestsas the stuff of diplomatic business; a great rise in the number of diplomatic “actors”, both state and non-state;sustained and interactive public involvement; and the vanishing distinction between external and internalaffairs.

The End of the Cold War and Nine Eleven

Certain major international events have played their part. Chief among them has been the end of the ColdWar, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Highly beneficial though this development has been, it hasbrought problems as well as opportunities world wide in its wake, and especially in the Balkans and on theperiphery of the former Soviet empire. The Cold War, it was said, gave place to a Hot Peace.

The events of September 11, 2001, signalled the advent of a new phase of international interdependence, inwhich international terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction emerged as potentially the greatestthreat to national security. Those events also underlined the urgency of a wide range of economic, social,environmental and human issues which were already on the international agenda, and had been broughtauthoritatively together in the Declarations issued by the world’s leaders meeting as the United Nations GeneralAssembly on the occasion of the UN’s 50th birthday in 1995, and for the Millennium in 2000.34

A Deus ex Machina

The change of mindset required in the Diplomatic Service in order to manage this extraordinary transitionis as great as that which inspired the seminal Foreign Office reforms of the first decade of the 20th century. It



is encapsulated in the ground-breaking White Paper UK International Priorities—A Strategy for the FCO,35

presented to Parliament in December, 2003, by the then Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw.

“For the first time”, Mr Straw explained, “the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is publishing acomprehensive Strategy describing the UK’s international priorities over the next 10 years and the FCO’s rolein achieving them”. In successive chapters the White Paper examines the role of the FCO; looks at the worldin the next 10 years, analysing trends which will affect the UK; considers the UK’s future role in theinternational system and our key relationships; draws on this analysis to see new UK strategic internationalpolicy priorities for the next decade; describes in more detail how the FCO will pursue these in the shortterm; and the countries and regions on which they will focus; and does the same for the FCO’s servicedelivery priorities.

The White Paper sets out eight strategic international priorities over the next five to 10 years:

— a world safer from global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction;

— protection of the UK from illegal immigration, drug trafficking and other international crime;

— an international system based on the rule of law, which is better able to resolve disputes andprevent conflicts;

— an effective EU in a secure neighbourhood;

— promotion of UK economic interests in an open and expanding global economy;

— sustainable development, underpinned by democracy, good government and human rights;

— security of UK and global energy supplies, and

— security and good governance of the UK’s Overseas Territories.

These formulations are an object lesson in clarity, succinctness and comprehensiveness. They immediatelyinspire confidence. They reflect both the changes which the twenty-first century has already witnessed, and areadiness to take account of further changes which may occur in the future. As the Permanent Under-Secretaryat the time, Sir Michael Jay, put it at a gathering in the FCO to launch the White Paper, “we now have for thefirst time a coherent framework for adapting and modernising the Foreign Office to meet the challenges of the21st century”.36 It could be said to be the apotheosis of the advisory function.

Subsequent Developments

Mr Straw said he would welcome Parliamentary and public debate on the White Paper. The FCO wouldreview it every two years, inviting external contributions. In the event there was no Parliamentary debate tospeak of, and little academic or media comment. This was disappointing, but not perhaps surprising. The WhitePaper incorporated new ways of thinking not readily assimilable by those of a more conventional mindset.37

A second version was published in March, 2006,38 under the title Active Diplomacy for a Changing World—The UK’s International Priorities. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons announced thatit intended to ensure that this revised version was considered as part of its work as a whole.39

The 2006 White Paper contained a Foreword by the Prime Minister (Mr Tony Blair) thereby emphasisingits interdepartmental character. Its approach and methodology, naturally, were broadly the same as those of its2003 predecessor. The number of priorities rose from eight to nine, by virtue of the promotion of managingmigration and combating illegal immigration to independent status. Mr Straw’s successor, Mrs MargaretBeckett, raised the number to 10 by the similar elevation of climate change.

A new Strategic Framework, January, 2008

Her successor, Mr David Miliband, thought that 10 priorities was too many. He reported to the House ofCommons on 23 January 2008, the creation of a new Strategic Framework, to replace the 10 priorities,concentrating on four policy goals: to counter terrorism, weapons proliferation and their causes; to present andresolve conflict; to promote a low carbon, high growth, global economy; and to deliver effective internationalinstitutions, above all the UN and the EU.

The Foreign Affairs Committee commented on the brevity of the Strategic Framework.40 There were groundsfor concern in a number of respects. First, although 10 priorities may be too many to receive sustained personalat10tion from the Foreign Secretary himself or herself, it is certainly not too many for a compe10t FCOministerial team, provided that they are allowed to remain in their respective jobs for the requisite amount oftime. Secondly, the four policy goals, when compared with the priorities originally listed by Mr Straw, can beseen to leave out a number of issues of vital national concern, to which priority FCO at10tion is essential.Thirdly, the Framework seems to imply a relatively greater emphasis on the executive function of theDiplomatic Service, as compared with its advisory function, in marked contrast to the 2003 and 2006 WhitePapers, with the possible loss in consequence of FCO departmental clout.41

Apotheosis of the Advisory Function: is there a Downside?

In the perspective of the evolution of the advisory function of the Diplomatic Service, the 2003 White Paper,as already suggested, can surely be regarded as the apotheosis. Is this an undiluted benefit? Or do subsequent



developments imply that there is a downside? The broad answer is that the greater precision with which oneseeks to articulate the issues facing the country in its international dealings, and the more one attempts todefine the priorities to be adopted, the greater the temptation to establish objectives and specific measures toachieve them. Up to a point this is no more than tax-payers are entitled to expect. But the process is quicklysubject to the Law of Diminishing Returns. In a field as unpredictable as world affairs, foreign policy prioritiesare indicators or markers rather than targets. An essential element of the advisory function is stewardship ofinternational realities and uncertainties of world as they impinge on the national concerns of whatever sort.This stewardship, like Talleyrand, cannot but counsel against the overzealous. Forethought is the handmaid offlexibility, not its gaoler.

IX The Cross-stitch of Managerialism

Administration is said to be about keeping things going, while management is about making things go. Thedistinction between the two, less of10 drawn today than in the past, has some resonance among those who areconscious of the limits of the scope of management in a field as subject to the unexpected and the uncontrollableas the conduct of foreign policy. They see diplomacy as essentially an art rather than a science.

While it may have had a good deal of validity in the more static days of classical diplomacy, this approachis clearly inadequate in the dynamic international conditions described in the first section of this memorandum.The latter, combined with modern facilities in the field of data-processing, have made a more “positive” attitudeboth necessary and—within limits—feasible.

But what, more precisely, do we mean by “management” in the context of the work of the DiplomaticService? The short answer is “a great deal”, including all the ground covered in the Plowden, Duncan andCPRS Reports. The whole is magisterially summed up in the 2003 White Paper on UK International Priorities:

“To meet our strategic priorities, build our key relationships and provide high quality services, the FCOwill need a flexible and targeted diplomatic network that gives the UK global influence. The Strategyexplains how we in10d to achieve this at a time of growing demands and finite resources.

The Strategy also describes how we are adapting the organisation and working practices of the FCO tofocus resources more clearly on high priority issues, to become more flexible and responsive, to makebetter use of diverse skills and experience, and to be better able to meet our customers’ needs”.42

The Picture as a Whole: the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee

There is no expectation that the FCO could or should be left to itself to pursue this comprehensive andabsorbing programme on its own. In national managerial terms, the least that can be expected is scrutiny onthe basis of strictly financial criteria by those responsible for authorising or monitoring public expenditure.Such scrutiny naturally leads to examination of the substance of the activities being financed, as well as to theallocation of resources to them, ie inputs.

In these days of near-ubiquitous “delivery deficit”, there is a further natural progression from concern withinputs to the examination of the results achieved from the application of the resources allocated, ie outputs. Itis a short step thereafter to holistic survey of the “structures, functions and priorities” of the Diplomatic Service.

It is the responsibility of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee “to examine the expenditure,administration and policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its associated agencies”. TheCommittee discharges its responsibilities with admirable application, precision and breadth of perspective. Itswork is a first class illustration of the merits of the Select Committee system.

Managerialism rather than Management?

Management consultancy is a relatively recent phenomenon. Its introduction into the sphere of publicadministration is prompted by, and has encouraged, the belief that managerial techniques developed in theprivate sector can be of more or less general applicability in the public sector as well. While there is clearly ameasure of justification for this belief in the case of Departments and agencies concerned with the delivery ofservices at home, it is more open to doubt in the case of the FCO, where so much of what is at issue is non-specific and lies beyond UK national control.

Matters are made worse if there is a trend towards the introduction of public service-wide of practices, therelevance or usefulness of which differ from department to department. Yet this has been the recent experience.Mr Miliband’s new Strategic Framework comprises three elements, from which emerge eight DepartmentalStrategic Objectives (DSOs) agreed with the Treasury. The FCO is now run by a Board, whose terms ofreference are worded in managerial rather than substantive terms. It has spawned no less than six Sub-Committees, whose terms of reference are similarly cast. The whole would seem to smack of managerialismrather than of effective management. Managerialism is by definition excessive—or bad—management.

The Foreign Affairs Committee were forthright in their views on the matter. “We have consistentlyquestioned whether it is appropriate to have a set of performance targets assessed in terms of detailed andsometimes quantified indicators.” Their conclusion was that “at least as regards policy objectives, the current



elaborate reporting system absorbs large amounts of FCO staff time that might be better spent on other matters,without necessarily generating significant new information”.43

X Present Discontents

Thirty years later, the realities on the ground look rather different from the picture painted in the 1978 WhitePaper. In the book to accompany Getting Our Way, his recent television series on five hundred years of BritishDiplomacy, Sir Christopher Meyer, a former Ambassador to the United States, observes that the FCO,“according to numerous witnesses, has fallen again on hard times, surrendering swathes of responsibility forforeign policy to other players in the Whitehall community and continuing to live a crisis of confidence andidentity”. This was marked by the “activism abroad of the Prime Minister’s office, and the autonomy andfunding given to the DFID”.44

In an article in the Financial Times on 14 January 2010. Lord Malloch Brown, who was a Minister of Stateat the FCO from 2007 to 2009, asserted that “ the real crisis for the Foreign Office is whether it will be allowedto lead in its embassies and Whitehall, or will it be reduced to landlord and events organiser for other parts ofgovernment…… In Whitehall impatient Prime Ministers often elbow the Foreign Office aside to run foreignpolicy “whether from sofa or bunker”.45

As part of the series by Michael Cockerell on the “Three Great Departments of State” (the other two beingthe Treasury and the Home Office), BBC television carried a programme on the FCO on February 18, 2010.In it Lord Hurd, a former member of the Diplomatic Service, as well as a former Foreign Secretary, echoing aspeech which he made in the House of Lords on 26 February 2009,46 spoke of a feeling that the FCO was“hollowed out” on the advisory side, and was no longer characterised to the same extent by the solid expertisefor which it had been known. In the same programme Professor Peter Hennessy reported the distress of hiscontacts in the SIS that they could no longer count on turning to the FCO Research Analysts to try outtheir ideas.

The Verdict of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee

These concerns were reflected in the wide-ranging report of the Foreign Affairs Committee Foreign andCommonwealth Annual Report 2008–2009, to which reference was made in the introduction to thisMemorandum.47

The Committee’s general diagnosis was that the FCO’s traditional pre-eminence in foreign policy-makingwas seen as under challenge from three developments: new forms of global communication which make otherdepartments and agencies less dependent on the FCO network; an increasing tendency, related to thisdevelopment, for other parts of the Government to establish their own direct links with other states; and greateremphasis in the FCO on the provision of services to the public and the introduction, largely at the behest ofthe Treasury, of management practices which divert time and resources from traditional political reporting,analysis and policy-making.

The Committee concluded that:

(i) with regard to funding arrangements and performance management, the Treasury has too often treatedthe FCO as “just another Department”, when it is clear from international experience that foreignministries are not like other departments;

(ii) it is incongruous that the position of the only government department with a global reach is threatenedwith erosion at a time when globalisation is acknowledged as the key phenomenon of our times; and

(iii) there continues to be a vital need for the FCO to have sufficient resources to enable it to carry out itstraditional functions, of the interpretation of developments overseas and the formulation of policy.

The Committee’s recommendation that the new Government should “carry out a comprehensive foreignpolicy-led review of the structures, functions and priorities of the FCO, MOD and DFID” follows naturallyfrom these conclusions.48

XI The Stance of the Coalition Government

It is too early to expect the adoption of any definitive position on all these issues by the CoalitionGovernment, which came into power in May, 2010. But there are already a number of significant pointers torecord. In speeches before the election, Mr William Hague, in his capacity as Conservative Shadow ForeignSecretary, made it clear that the FCO’s leading position in the field of international affairs would be restored.Promise has become reality. We have seen the back of sofa or bunker diplomacy.

At the same time there is no suggestion that Mr Cameron will be less involved in international affairs thanhis predecessors. The realities of interdependence mean that it could not be otherwise. There is an inevitableelement of the presidential about modern government, extending to external, as well as to internal, affairs. ThePrime Minister is ex officio the First Lord of the Treasury, which is a useful reminder of his or her locus standiwith that great Department of State. It might be helpful if some similar formulation could be found to reflectthe Prime Minister’s position in the case of the FCO.



The Status of the FCO

The status of the FCO is not so much a matter of departmental prestige as of the personal relations betweenthe Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister and, perhaps one should add in present circumstances, the DeputyPrime Minister. Much also depends on the calibre of the Foreign Secretary’s ministerial team. The Minister forEurope must be given adequate time in the job if he or she is to carry the necessary weight in EU deliberations,be it in Brussels or at home. Regrettably there was a revolving-door character about the post in the case of theprevious administration.

One cannot imagine that the more pronounced features of managerialism we have witnessed in the previousadministration will last long with the Coalition Government.

The Substance of British Foreign Policy

As regards the substance of British foreign policy, we can be guided in particular by the terms of theCoalition Agreement, amplified by a series, not yet complete, of speeches by Mr Hague “setting out how wewill protect British security, prosperity and people, working with other countries to strengthen the rules-basedsystem in support of our values”.49

The objectives, as set out by the FCO are:

(i) Safeguard Britain’s national security by countering terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, andworking to reduce conflict.

(ii) Build Britain’s prosperity by increasing exports and investment, opening markets, ensuring access toresources, and promoting sustainable global growth.

(iii) Support British citizens around the world through modern and efficient consular services.

As regards (i) and (ii), the promotion of the safety and the prosperity of the realm has long been a classicformulation of the essence of foreign policy. But it can mean very different things in differing world conditions.There is a chapeau to Mr Hague’s formulation which places it firmly in the context of the twenty-first century:“our aim is to promote Britain’s enlightened interest in a networked world. We will pursue an active andactivist foreign policy, working with other countries and strengthening the rules-based international system insupport of the following three objectives”.

The wording of objective (iii) is of interest in the sense that it could be taken, for example to mean solicitudeand assistance for those of our compatriots whose ebullience while on holiday abroad gets them into a pickleof some sort. A more weighty interpretation would reflect recognition of the contribution of British citizensliving or travelling abroad to the achievement of objectives (i) and (ii). In an interdependent age, where thereare so many non-governmental “actors” in the field of international affairs, and where internal and externalconcerns so extensively overlap, this contribution is substantial indeed.

Overall there is much in the stance of the Coalition Government which recalls the 2003 White Paper UKInternational Priorities. Diplomats are happiest when foreign policy is bipartisan or non-partisan. That impliesacceptance across the domestic political spectrum of international realities. The ineluctable facts of the worldin which we live impose limits on our freedom of manoeuvre. The difference between foreign secretaries, ofwhatever stripe, may well be more matters of style or presentation than of content, methodology or structures.

The enduring Requirement for a Cadre of Competent Diplomats

In the long run the interdepartmental distribution of labour will depend on the quality of the DiplomaticService. Turf wars may be an ineradicable part of bureaucracies, each component of which has in any case aduty to fight its corner. But at the end of the day, doing the job properly matters more than who does it. Theemphasis is on the word “service”. As long as the members of the Diplomatic Service are masters of theirbusiness, they will not be left out in the cold. They are indispensable to the sound conduct of foreign policy.

Sir Leslie Fielding, a prominent former member of the Diplomatic Service, recalls the reception he wasaccorded on his first day in the Foreign Office. After conducting him through the necessary formalities for newentrants, the world-weary clerk responsible offered him the following reflection: “no matter how rigorous andsearching and exigent we make the selection process for Branch A (the “administrative class”) we still findthat the percentage of idiots in the intake remains constant”.50 One is tempted to apply, mutatis mutandis, thishard-bitten proposition to the role diplomats. No matter what arrangements the government may properlycontrive, in response to changes in circumstances, to ensure the efficient conduct of foreign policy, there willalways be a requirement for a cadre of diplomatic professionals to help deliver what the nation desires.

XII Conclusion

(1) The recommendation that the “new Government should carry out a comprehensive policy-led review ofthe structures, functions and priorities of the FCO, MOD and DFID” comes from a body which, by virtue bothof its constitutional responsibilities and of its outstanding work during the last Parliament, is better placed thanany other external entity to reach such a conclusion.



(2) Study of the evolution of the Diplomatic Service over the past one hundred years lends firm support tothe recommendation. In particular, the report, published in 1964, of the Plowden Committee onRepresentational Services Overseas bears close re-examination.

(3) In weighing the Foreign Affairs Committee recommendation, HMG will clearly have many factors totake into account, not least the acute financial and fiscal problems which the country now faces, and theimminent belt-tightening measures necessary to counter them.

(4) The conjuncture in which such a review took place would be all-important. Coalition government has itsadvantages in this respect. The terms of any review should not be controversial. There would be little point ina review if it were established primarily to save money. We do not need a repetition of the Duncan andCPRS inquiries.

(5) It is to be expected that the new Foreign Affairs Committee will direct their attention to these pressingissues. The recommendation of their predecessors may thus in effect be subsumed in a continuing dialoguebetween the Committee and HMG. But this would be unlikely of itself to ensure the securing of wide publicunderstanding and support for the work of the Diplomatic Service which is an indispensable long term nationalrequirement, and which could not but be an essential aim of any thorough-going review.

1 October 2010

Notes1 HC 145, March, 20102 These issues have of course been extensively explored, both individually and in their numerousinterrelationships, notably in a series of Symposia organised by the Diplomatic Academy of London, Universityof Westminster. See in particular Strategic Public Diplomacy—Shaping the Future of International Relations”-proceedings of the Symposium of 2008. (edited by Nabil Ayad and Daryl Copeland, University of Westminster,2009) We have coined the term “Geodiplomatics” to denote the management of world wide interdependence.A particularly lively account of the role of the modern diplomat is given in Daryl Copeland Guerilla Diplomacy(Lynne Rienner, 2009). On his reckoning, the diplomat is “part archivist, part analyst, part lobbyist and partstreet-smart policy entrepreneur”.3 Sir Ernest Satow (1843–1929) was a scholar and historian as well as one of the outstanding diplomats of hisday. Thanks in large measure to his formidable linguistic powers, he became the foremost British expert onChina, Japan and the Far East as a whole. His Guide to Diplomatic Practice first appeared in 1917. The fifthedition, edited by Sir Ivor Roberts, was published in 2009 (OUP). While the vast changes which have occurredsince then are reflected in the various editions, the work inevitably, and justifiably, retains its original emphasison the executive side of the business of diplomacy, as distinct from its advisory role.4 See Zara Steiner: The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898–1914 (CUP,1969), p 82. An entertaining, aswell as highly informative, account of these crucial formative years in Foreign Office history. The definitiveaccount of the development of the Foreign Office during the nineteenth century is contained in Chapter VIIIof Volume III of The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919 (CUP, 1923). The amalgamationof the Diplomatic Service with the Foreign Office is delightfully examined in Christine Larner’s article of thattitle in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 7, pp 107–126.5 The Crowe memorandum was published in G P Gooch and Harold Temperley (eds) British Documents onthe Origins of the War Vol 3, Appendix A, pp 397–420.6 Tilley and Gaselee: The Foreign Office (Putnam, 1933). Sir John Tilley was chief Clerk from 1913 to 1918,and Stephen Gaselee was Librarian and Keeper of the Papers at the time of publication. It was Gaselee whoinvented the concept of the “inverted sieve”. He regarded it as a “bad simile” but used it “because I could findno better” (p 265).7 Sir Victor Wellesley: Diplomacy in Fetters (Hutchinson, 1944). Wellesley records that the book waspractically complete when the Second World War broke out. This both delayed publication and necessitated anumber of changes. At the same time it underlined the necessity of the reforms he was recommending.8 Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service (Cmd 6420, January, 1943). The White Paper was the subjectof lively discussion in both Houses of Parliament.9 Cmd 6420, para 210 ibid, para 311 Lord Strang and other Members of the Foreign Service: The Foreign Office (Allen and Unwin, 1955).12 Strang: The Diplomatic Career (Deutsch, 1962) p 14. In addition to his autobiography Home and Abroad(Deutsch, 1956), Strang wrote Britain in World Affairs” (Faber and Faber and Deutsch, 1961) a magisterial“Survey of the Fluctuations in British Power and Influence, Henry VIII to Elizabeth II”.13 Report of the Committee on Representational Services Overseas appointed by the Prime Minister under theChairmanship of Lord Plowden, Cmnd 2276, February, 1964.



14 Report of the Committee on Representational Services Overseas appointed by the Prime Minister under theChairmanship of Lord Plowden, para 10.

15 The Plowden Report affords detailed evidence, as early as the 1960s, both of the transformation of diplomaticcircumstances under the growing pressure of the Vectors summarised in the first section of this memorandum,and of the responses required by an active diplomatic service.Lord Beloff, at that time Gladstone Professor of Government and Administration at Oxford, described theReport as “an inside job”. This does not deprive it of all validity. It is the wearer of the shoe who is best ableto judge where it pinches. As the chief instigator of the Review, I stand ready to plead guilty as charged. Aftermuch preliminary discussion, the idea was first formally broached in a submission dated January 28, 1960, bythe Permanent Under-Secretary to the Foreign Secretary.

16 Ray Seitz, the first career diplomat to be appointed US Ambassador to the Court of St James (1991–94) putthe matter in elegant perspective: “in a statement equal in renown to Acheson’s, Harold Macmillan observedthat Britain would henceforth play Athens to America’s Rome. Macmillan outdid Acheson in bothcondescension and insight”.

17 The Civil Service Report of the Committee 1966–68, Chairman: Lord Fulton, Cmnd 3638, June 1968. ATimes leader on June 27 summarised the message of the Report as “thumbs down for the amateur”.

18 Report of the Review Committee on Overseas Representation, 1968–1969, Chairman: Sir Val Duncan, Cmnd4107, July, 1969. In an article in International Affairs in April, 1970, “The Duncan Report and its Critics” (Vol46, pp 247 et seq), Andrew Shonfield, Director of Studies at Chatham House and a prominent member of theCommittee, admitted that the use of the term “Outer Area” was unfortunate. But he claimed that those whotook exception to it on the grounds that they relegated India and other developing countries to reduced attention,tended to overlook the point that the Soviet Union and China were also in the category.All in all, Shonfield thought that the Report had “disturbed a set of emotions”. He commented ruefully that “ifthere is one thing worse than being a bringer of bad tidings, it is to be the drawer of unwelcome inferencesfrom familiar propositions”.

19 Review of Overseas Representation: Report by the Central Policy Review Staff. HMSO, 1977. The Reportwas not presented formally to Parliament, and has no Command number.

20 A number of analogies have been suggested for the policy-making process. For example it is likened to thefour-stroke cycle of the internal combustion process: for “induction/compression/power/exhaust” substitute:“analysis/recommendation/implementation/assessment”.

21 Underlying this assumption is what may be a characteristic of British thought structures in general: namelya tendency to believe that if, as it must be, the primary object of public administration is to get things done,then the acquisition of executive skills is something which can to a great extent be pursued independently ofthe subject matter. At all events the distinction between “what to do” and “how to do it” is clearly reluctant toleave the scene.

22 Cmnd 7308. The text, while admirably concise, deals somewhat blandly with the awesome difficulties, botheconomic and political, which we were then facing abroad and at home.

23 ibid, para 68

24 HMSO, 1980. Despite its origins, the paper was not presented formally to Parliament, and has noCommand number.

25 See Robert A Mortimer: The Third World Coalition in International Politics (2nd edition, Westview, 1984)

26 The United Nation Conference on Trade and Development. Originally convened in 1964 as a one-offConference, it became an organ of the General Assembly and begat substantial subordinate machinery.

27 The Declaration of a New International Economic Order was the outcome of the Sixth Special Session ofthe UN General Assembly in 1974, at the combined initiative of the non-Aligned Movement and the Group of77 developing countries. For a detailed discussion of these and related issues, see Marshall: The North-SouthDialogue: Britain at Odds, in Jensen and Fisher(eds) The United Kingdom—The United Nations (Macmillan,1990).

28 North—South: a Programme for Survival The Report of the Independent Commission on InternationalDevelopment Issues under the Chairmanship of Willy Brandt (Pan Books, 1980).

29 Sunday Times, July 20, 1980

30 HC 145, para 330

31 Personal letter from a former UK Representative to the EU.

32 The most striking case in point was a letter published on January 28, 2008, in the Financial Times, from allseven retired former UK Representatives in Brussels, commending the Lisbon Treaty as it started its waythrough Parliament. This totality renders it a document unique in British diplomatic annals. In the light of



subsequent events, its line of argument cannot but seem even more misguided now than it did at the timeof publication.

33 See Articles 155 -163 of the Treaty of Rome, 1957

34 These texts take the form of UN General Assembly Resolutions, numbered respectively A/Res//50/6 and A/Res/55/1. The similar Declaration issued on the occasion of the UN 60th anniversary is numbered A/Res/60/1.

35 Cm 6052, December, 2003

36 Remarks by the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Michael Jay, at the launching of the White Paper, onDecember 2, 2003, at the FCO.

37 When the Foreign Affairs Committee invited comments on the FCO Annual Departmental Report coveringthe year 2003–04, I inquired whether this invitation extended to Mr Straw’s White Paper, and was told that itdid. I therefore submitted a memorandum which the Committee were good enough both to publish and tonotice favourably in a separate section of their Report (HC 745, paras 35–42, and Ev 70–76). Mine was theonly substantive general comment on the White Paper which the Committee received from non-governmentalsources.

38 Cm 6762, March, 2006

39 Press Notice no 28 of 2 May 2007, recorded the Committee’s intention of ensuring that the White Paperwas considered as part of the Committee’s work as a whole.

40 HC 145, Ev 127

41 ibid, para 331, and Ev 127

42 See the concluding paragraphs of the Highlights summary accompanying the main text

43 HC 145, para 294

44 ibid, para 331

45 ibid, para 332

46 Before turning to politics, Lord Hurd was a member of the Diplomatic Service, and is thus well positionedto make this judgment.

47 HC 145

48 ibid, para 338

49 The first of the speeches was delivered at the FCO on July 1; the second in Tokyo on July 15; and the thirdat Lincoln’s Inn on September 15. The fourth is due to be delivered in the autumn.

50 Sir Leslie Fielding, Kindly Call me God (Boermans Books, 2009) p 9

Written evidence from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI)

Executive Summary

1. The CBI is the UK’s leading business organisation, speaking for some 240,000 businesses that togetheremploy around a third of the private sector workforce. With offices across the UK as well as representation inBrussels, Washington DC, Beijing and New Delhi, the CBI communicates the British business voice aroundthe world.

2. This submission responds to those questions in the inquiry terms of reference that are of direct concernto business; namely, the FCO’s role in promoting UK trade and economic recovery, the role of the FCO’snetwork overseas and cross-government cooperation.

3. As the UK continues to emerge from recession, future economic prosperity will be greatly determined bythe UK’s success in overseas markets—in exports and ability to attract and supply foreign direct investment(FDI) in ways that will let UK companies succeed in multiple markets.

4. The UK government must continue its efforts to set the right trade policy framework at an internationallevel. The CBI strongly advocates a timely conclusion of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiationsin the WTO, and urges the UK government to do all it can, eg within the EU and in groupings such as theG20, to secure political support for this. The CBI also strongly supports bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs),as building blocks towards a multilateral agreement.

5. UK official support in Brussels is vital. The European Union is key to the UK’s economic recoveryprocess—both as the negotiator of international trade and investment rules, but also because it is effectivelyboth “home market” and the number one export destination for the UK. When considering ways in which toimprove the UK’s trade and investment performance, therefore, the Single Market should not be overlooked.



6. In terms of direct UK government support for companies, the CBI believes there is a vital ongoing rolefor the FCO and UKTI, in particular the expertise and intelligence provided by overseas posts. We accept thatthe FCO must bear its share of cuts in funding at this particular time, and believe that the spending levelsannounced in the Comprehensive Spending Review of October 2010 were tough but acceptable. They do, ofcourse, increase the pressure on the FCO/UKTI to deliver as efficiently as possible. We suggest half a dozenways in which FCO/UKTI might increase its performance, eg by putting a particular focus on a more limitednumber of priority markets.

Introduction: Trade and Investment are Essential to Our Growth Prospects

7. The UK is still in the early stages of a modest and gradual recovery. The CBI expects growth of only 2%in 2011, and 2.4% in 2012. We expect net trade to be an important component of that limited growth.

8. Support to the recovery must therefore come from business investment, and from net trade. Net tradeactually detracted marginally from growth in Q3, but we forecast that it will add to growth in the quartersahead, as relatively weak gains in domestic demand restrict import growth and exports continue to be boostedby the past depreciation in sterling.

9. As many commentators have noted, to date this fall in the value of sterling has not delivered the boost totrade that might have been expected. On a trade-weighted basis, the pound has fallen more in the recent yearsthan in the period after it exited the ERM. An assessment of whether the benefits are only now kicking in, orwhether there are other reasons holding back the UK’s export performance, will be important in the nextmonths.

10. Promisingly, the CBI’s manufacturing survey data has shown quite strong export demand at the end of2010. But prospects for export growth will also depend crucially on the pace of recovery in the UK's keytrading partners. Ongoing fiscal concerns in peripheral European states, and the effect that this may have onactivity and confidence in the Eurozone as a whole, therefore poses a key downside risk to our export prospects.

11. Against this background, the CBI strongly supports this government’s emphasis on trade and investment.We welcomed the Prime Minister’s commitment to free trade and open markets and to step up the commercialfocus of the UK’s foreign policy. We welcome the efforts by the Foreign Secretary, Secretary of State forBusiness Innovation and Skills and their departmental ministers to reinvigorate the UK’s overarching trade andinvestment strategy. We particularly support the strengthening of bilateral relationships with countries includingIndia, China, Brazil, Turkey and the Gulf States. Enhanced partnerships such as that envisaged between theUK and India give a clear signal that joint business development is high up the agenda.

12. We recognise the key role of the FCO in contributing to deficit reduction by helping to facilitate improvedexport and investment performance and by supporting UK business presence in high growth markets such asthose mentioned above.

13. FCO Heads of Mission play an important role in delivering trade and investment objectives, especiallywhere there is only a small UKTI or local commercial team. The political insights they can offer as well ascontact networks they can instigate are invaluable in briefing businesses.

14. The CBI welcomes the creation of the FCO’s Commercial Task Force in August 2010, in particular theemphasis on upgrading and embedding commercial awareness amongst staff and working towards a whole-of-government approach to progress the prosperity agenda.

15. We are pleased to see all Ambassadors and UK government representatives overseas putting support forbusiness as their key priority.

Getting Trade Policy “Right”: The DDA, FTAs and Resisting Protectionism

16. In addition to getting the basics of international competitiveness right, the government and FCO canhelp British companies overseas by working to get the right trade and investment policy in place. Both of theseareas are now within the competence of the European Union, so above all, this means focusing on getting theright policy decisions taken in Brussels.

17. The CBI strongly advocates timely conclusion of the WTO Doha Round (DDA). We believe that aneffective multilateral trade agreement is by far the best way to create a level playing field, increase marketaccess and improve global rules. We acknowledge that it is increasingly difficult to rouse much enthusiasm forthe DDA, as the negotiations have now dragged on for a decade. Nevertheless, CBI member companies clearlyexpect that the British government should continue to push for an ambitious outcome to the negotiations.

18. We fully support bilateral free-trade agreements as they are a key to increasing market access forEuropean companies in fast-growing markets such as South Korea, India, Mercosur and South East Asiancountries. While the multilateral route will always provide the optimal route for trade liberalisation, well framedfree trade agreements (FTAs) can also bring important benefits for all parties, including businesses.

19. FCO work to shape and reform key international institutions and organizations such as the EU, G20 andUN Security Council lead to enhanced stability and co-operation and is therefore good for business.



20. In all negotiations—both multilateral and bilateral—the CBI believes the EU must give priority toeconomic objectives, strongly promoting the export and investment interests of European business. The Britishgovernment with support of the FCO should make this point strongly in Brussels.

21. Across the board, UK government officials should play an instrumental role in shaping the EU’snegotiating FTA mandate, taking into account the potential benefits and costs to all UK sectors throughcomprehensive impact assessments and seeking to balance offensive and defensive interests.

22. One major area for potential growth is trade in services. At the European level, services make up 70%of European GDP, but represent only 28% of European external trade. This disparity presents a majoropportunity for a future EU trade policy to make a substantial contribution to European competiveness andprosperity—and the UK, in particular, would benefit from this.

23. Achieving market opening for services requires a more complicated and difficult process involving arange of government departments and regulators. This makes ongoing discussions both at the European-leveland Member State-level important in facilitating information exchange and legislative adjustments wherenecessary to open up services.

24. Trade can only be a driver for business opportunities when there is strong and effective enforcement ofgoverning rules. A firm line should therefore be taken on countries which do not adhere to internationaltrade commitments.

The FCO Supporting Business in the EU

25. British business is a strong supporter of the Single Market and the many advantages and opportunitiesit provides. Internally, it has enabled the EU’s 20 million business to provide goods and services to almost 500million citizens. Externally, the 30-country European Economic Area is the world’s largest trading bloc andgives Europe its global strength.

26. The Single Market is the foundation of the EU’s recent economic success. It is estimated that 52% ofUK trade, half of inward investment and nearly 3 million jobs are linked to the EU. Similarly, some 300,000British businesses operate in non-domestic markets across Europe, generating prosperity and growth at homeand on the global stage.

27. Open markets and free trade, internally and externally, are integral to business interest in the EU. Theeconomic downturn has, however, highlighted the Single Market’s vulnerability to protectionism and barriersto completion remain. British business therefore supports policymakers’ renewed focus on delivery of theSingle Market and the five freedoms it represents.

28. FCO work to focus the EU agenda on issues such as climate change, energy security, better regulation,the effective enforcement of EU rules and the possible implications of further enlargement all enhance prospectsfor UK and European growth and competiveness.

FCO Global Support for British Business

29. Beyond setting the right policy frameworks, government has a key role to play in providing directsupport for companies looking to expand their presence overseas. At a time of extremely constrained publicfinances, it is understandable that funding for these efforts will have to be somewhat restricted. Nevertheless,the CBI believes that government support for FCO/UKTI is extremely valuable; delivers a significant returnon investment for the economy, and should be preserved as far as possible. We believe that the spending levelsannounced in the Comprehensive Spending Review of October 2010 were tough but acceptable.

30. Reduced resources do, of course, increase the pressure on the FCO to deliver as efficiently as possible—the classic “do more with less”. The CBI supports the direction that the FCO and UKTI have been moving inover the last 18 months. We are hopeful that the FCO will continue to recognise the need for a tailored offeringthat precisely identifies priority markets and sectors, and particular business needs.

31. Business is looking for consistency of strategy and therefore supports the FCO four year Business Planand implementation strategy to ensure cohesion across all government activities overseas, and the sharing ofbest practice across Whitehall.

32. In the short term, the CBI supports a greater focus on a smaller number of high growth export markets,alongside work to build on success in more developed markets especially in innovation. UKTI has identifiedseventeen high growth markets; amongst these it should prioritise markets such as China, India and Brazil toensure the greatest return possible on taxpayer investment.

33. When measuring success of services provided, more sophisticated metrics are needed than headline ‘newentrant to market’ numbers. Quantitative targets are useful—and necessary when dealing with public funds—but should not become a sole end in themselves. They should be complemented with qualitative targets interms of work provided and outcomes in terms of business won.



34. Similarly, a focus on meeting numerical quotas for chargeable services should be qualified by othermetrics. An over-focus on the targets, we believe, detracts from the imperative of identifying additionalopportunities for existing proactive exporters and investors.

35. The Passport to Export and Gateway to Global Growth (G3) programmes are valued by new andestablished exporters respectively. The OMIS (Overseas Market Introduction Service) is also broadly supportedby business. However, as with economic and political briefs, it vitally important that there are effective qualityand consistency controls in place.

36. FCO posts must ensure that commercial objectives are thoroughly integrated into their other policyobjectives eg commercial opportunities arising from policy areas such as climate change. Excellentcommunication between UKTI and ‘pure’ Foreign Office staff on the ground could deliver a really valuableintelligence product for UKTI clients. (Another example of best practice here would be the US network’s workon business opportunities from the US Stimulus package, which involved staff from the Embassy inWashington, DC, as well as the Science & Technology network and all UKTI posts in the US.)

37. FCO/UKTI should also move to a more account management style of interaction with its largest clientcompanies. This would enable it to have a much better understanding of companies’ needs and market strategiesand thereby tailor the UKTI/FCO offering more precisely. It is also important that there is close liaison betweenUKTI and BIS sector teams, who perform similar account management roles.

38. An area of particular opportunity that has already been identified is large-scale projects requiring multiplecompany involvement. UKTI has estimated that there is currently a potential of around £700bn of non-defencecontracts and projects that could be secured in this way, with UKTI helping to pull together consortia. It shouldbe noted that this is also a very good way of helping SMEs into new markets, by plugging them into supplychain relationships.

39. Major infrastructure developments in the high growth economies and international sports events suchas the World Cup and Olympic Games in Brazil will provide interesting test cases for these project andconsortia approaches.

40. UKTI has been shifting towards a more sectoral based approach, both at a national level and via sectoraldimensions to all regional and overseas staff. The CBI believes this can be an effective approach. We wouldurge UKTI to build better relationships with key trade associations in the relevant areas in support of this. Wealso believe there could be an improvement in the relationship between business sector advisory groups andstaff covering priority markets, to ensure there is no duplication of effort between regional/national or sectoral/market levels.

Visa Policy: International Business People Need to Travel

41. Companies looking to do business internationally are highly likely to want to move their staff aroundthe globe—bringing locally-based sales staff back to a UK headquarters for training, for example, or sendingsenior management overseas to establish new business partnerships. It is therefore crucial to the UK’s prospectsthat it is as easy as possible to move staff from country to country.

42. It is vital overseas posts maintain adequate consular resources in order to facilitate visa services forinward business visitors and prospective investors. Awareness among senior consular staff of FCO/UKTI tradepromotion objectives would be helpful in terms of avoiding unnecessary delays for significant business partners.

Financial Management

43. We welcome the new Foreign Currency Mechanism to restore protection to FCO purchasing poweroverseas and thereby secure best value for money in delivery services to UK businesses in market.

High-Level Involvement: Ministerial Delegations and the British Business AmbassadorsProgramme

44. The involvement of key ministers in supporting UK business in overseas markets—eg by leadingdelegations on foreign trips, attending JETCOs, welcoming incoming delegations—is very helpful, and wecommend the Government for the priority it has given to these.

45. The CBI believes that there is potential for prioritising this commitment further. Greater partnershipworking between the FCO and UK business in briefing ministers as well as direct ministerial briefings bycompanies on the ground can further increase the effectiveness of ministerial interventions. Learning from theapproach of other European countries could also be helpful.

46. While we understand the difficulties in scheduling overseas visits especially for ministers withparliamentary commitments, more advance warning of dates and visit plans would facilitate greater senior-level input and involvement by companies.

47. It would also help in securing senior-level commitment if visit programmes can be made available asearly as possible, and demonstrate that business leaders involved in ministerial delegations will get real valuefor their time input. Delegations where the minister has significant bilateral meetings, and the business “input”



is restricted to little more than providing an audience at a speaking opportunity or attending a networkingreception, will not secure the right level of business involvement.

48. We would also suggest that UKTI and the FCO review the coverage and content of the UK’s high-leveldialogues. It is not clear to us why some countries have a JETCO or similar dialogue and others do not—whatis the guiding strategy? The existing JETCO vary in substance. They can be very valuable forums for focusingpolitical attention on key business issues and should strive to avoid becoming formulaic. Bi-lateral businessdevelopment should be higher up the agenda.

49. The CBI has always supported the British Business Ambassadors scheme, and we welcomed its re-launch in November 2010. We also commend the government for securing the involvement of some verysignificant figures in the UK business community. However, in the past it has been difficult to identify exactlywhat the impact of the scheme has been. The Secretariat will need to be extremely proactive in terms of co-ordinating with the Ambassadors about their travel schedules and possible opportunities. The Ambassadorswill also require first class briefings to fulfil this role to their best ability.

Conclusion

50. Countries all around the world are seeking to increase their exports as a way of generating growth andjobs. Everyone recognises the same fundamental realities: the rise of the emerging and expanding middleclasses in countries such as India and China, and across Africa and the Americas, are the next generation ofconsumers. The UK will have to work hard to position itself in this race—UK business will need strong FCO/UKTI support to get international policy frameworks for trade and investment right; and tailored supportservices to companies to enable them to enter and thrive in rising economies.

January 2011

Written evidence from Professor Hussein Kassim, School of Politics, Social and International Studies,

University of East Anglia

The Role of the FCO in the UK Co-ordination of EU Policy

The role of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the coordination of the UK’s EU business haschanged significantly over the past 13 years in ways that raise important questions about the division of labourin European affairs between King Charles Street, Number 10 and the Cabinet Office, as well as the FCO’sresponsibilities, and the available expertise and level of resource the FCO devotes to this important policy area.In a study recently conducted by a team led by the author (Kassim et al 2010), based on interviews withofficials in several Whitehall departments,30 uncertainty was expressed about the sustainability of the FCO’srole since May 2010 and more broadly a model of national EU policy coordination centred on a ministry forforeign affairs.

The FCO in Historical Perspective

In 1998–99, officials across Whitehall invariably identified the FCO as a central actor in the UK’s systemfor coordinating EU policy playing a co-equal role alongside the European Secretariat in the Cabinet Officeand the UK Permanent Representation (UKREP) (Kassim 2000). It is useful to recall the FCO’s responsibilities,functions and organization during this period as a point of reference.

The FCO had a close relationship with UKREP. Not only did UKREP report to the FCO, but the FCOsupplied around 50% of UKREP’s staff and the culture of the UK’s mission in Brussels was closer to the FCOthan any other department. The Foreign Secretary was formally responsible for defining the UK’s Europeanpolicy, accompanied the PM to meetings of the European Council, attended the General Affairs Council, and,assisted by a Minister of State for European Affairs, took the lead in diplomacy with the UK’s Europeanpartners. The Foreign Secretary presided over, E(DOP), the cabinet committee charged with responsibility forEuropean policy, to which the official level committee, EQ(O), reported, while the Europe Minister chaired acommittee of junior ministers intended to assure political coordination across Whitehall and a committeeresponsible for maintaining party-to-party relations.

Within the FCO, two senior officials played a key role. The Economic and EU Director, one of five DeputyUnder-Secretaries in the FCO, was charged with developing the UK’s strategy towards Europe over themedium- and long-term. The Director for Europe, meanwhile, had a “hands on” role, which included managingthe three divisions within the FCO dealing with European policy: European Union Division (Internal), whichshadowed the progress of technical dossiers through EU processes, briefed the Foreign Secretary on EUbusiness, took the lead on cross-cutting issues, such as preparing for Inter-Governmental Conferences, andoperated the communications infrastructure connecting London to Brussels and other European capitals;European Union Division (External) took the lead in Whitehall for defining UK policy in regard to the EU’sexternal relations; and European Union Bilateral Relations (EUB). A fourth division was created whenever the30 As part of the research for the report, interviews were conducted with 30 officials in London and in Brussels between July and

November 2010. All interviews were conducted on the basis of strict confidentiality and the anonymity of respondents wasguaranteed. Quotations are therefore not attributed.



UK held the Council Presidency, while a specialist division in a separate chain of command was responsiblefor the CFSP and related business.

Both Labour PMs from 1997 to 2010 were interventionist in EU policy and PM Blair sought to give 10Downing Street a stronger role in steering the UK’s EU policy.31 This was symbolised by the appointment ofSir Stephen Wall as both Head of the European Secretariat and the PM’s adviser on Europe. However, thoughthe PM was more effectively advised and brought closer to domestic coordination, Downing Street did notdevelop the capacity to take a permanent lead in European policy. After 1997, HM Treasury also became moreassertive in EU policy, especially, though not exclusively, in regard to EMU and financial and budgetary issues.The FCO’s lead was thereby vulnerable to interventions from two major actors.

Although FCO contacts with embassies in EU member states remain an important FCO-centred resourcethat is mobilised in the pursuit of national policy objectives in a way that distinguishes the UK from othermember states, other developments have reduced the scope and presence of the FCO in EU policy. The strongposition the FCO had enjoyed in the late 1990s was gradually undermined by the loss of the near-monopolyover EU expertise it previously enjoyed as experience spread across Whitehall and the expansion of EUcompetencies extended to include areas where the technical expertise of the line ministries become morerelevant to EU business.32 Moreover, as a result of internal restructuring and other changes, the FCO no longershadowed all areas of EU policy, intervened in policy areas where there is no direct FCO interest, or, sinceevery department established its own link to UKREP, controlled communications between Whitehall andBrussels.33 Not only did the FCO cut back its coverage of European matters in London, but it has “pulledback … from day-to-day monitoring of the work at UKREP in which [it does not] have a strategic interest”.It is not as strongly represented among UKREP staff as in the past,34 nor does it formulate the instructionssent to UKREP. At the same time as it has become more independent of the FCO, UKREP retains its centralityin coordination, as symbolised by the weekly Cunliffe-Darroch meetings—the centrepiece of the UK system.

One of our respondents attributed the FCO’s diminishing role to a resource squeeze: “The Foreign Officehas less of a role than they did on central policy questions—this is to do with resources”—a desire for an FCOthat is “more foreign, less office”. Another saw a shift in priorities from Europe towards the Middle East andAsia,35 or toward an emphasis on trade promotion rather than the FCO’s traditional functions. A seniordiplomat, now retired, reflecting on the FCO’s loss of status in European matters, wondered whethergovernments had lost sight of the need for expertise that supports strategic thinking in foreign policy.

A major reorganization was enacted in 2006, when FCO structures were overhauled to allow the FCO toadapt to meet new strategic priorities. A single Directorate, Europe and Globalisation, now covers GlobalIssues, Africa and the Asia-Pacific, as well as Europe more broadly, and bilateral and multilateral, and issuesand areas, have been integrated at desk level. As a consequence, although the FCO runs a single Europeannetwork, unlike foreign ministries elsewhere, it has no directorate concerned exclusively with Europe.

The FCO’s Role Since May 2010

Since the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, the decline of the FCO’s influence inUK European policy appears to have been partly reversed,36 even if the streamlining of units dealing withEurope continued. The Foreign Secretary has taken a strong lead in setting European policy and the PM isless interventionist than his immediate predecessors. The resurgence of the FCO featured significantly amonginterviewees. Although an overwhelming majority averred that the Cabinet Office was the de facto centre ofthe UK system, several commented on the FCO’s new assertiveness:

“This is a much debated topic. Formally speaking it is the Cabinet Office, and broadly speaking thisis true.”

“There is an FCO/Cabinet Office axis—between the two they manage it.”

“The FCO and Cabinet Office are the de facto centre and work closely together, with the Cabinet Officeproviding coordination and the FCO providing strategy.”

“At the moment the power balance is quite balanced due to a strong Foreign Secretary and a strongEuropean advisor to No 10—the balance between the FCO and Cabinet Office is better.”

31 The greater involvement of the PM in European affairs was also a consequence of the expanding role of the European Council.32 “The FCO has been in the shadows for the last five years, as it had taken the view that there was so much EU business, that it

was impossible to handle, so it ended up with the line ministries with increasing frequency, with the FCO focusing onconstitutional issues. This was based on a critical understanding of the role of the FCO in the world and concluding that therewas now sufficient expertise within Whitehall to deal with European matters on a ministry-by-ministry basis.”

33 “The FCO has decreasingly involved itself in non-FCO business.[...] The FCO rarely gets involved in domestic EU businessunless it has major implications for our overall [foreign] relations. But the FCO is still important for information gathering etc.UKREP, the Treasury and lead ministries will all be important to this as well.”

34 UKREP officials working to COREPER I areas noted that there was not a single FCO official working on their floor.35 The number of staff working on Europe fell from 200 to around 90 following the UK Presidency in 2005.36 You saw at the same time, more and more people were being seconded to UKREP from line ministries, with particular skills

that FCO officials did not possess.



The Foreign Secretary’s role as chair of a revitalized cabinet committee, the European Affairs Committee,was regarded as especially significant. According to one official: “Under the new coalition [the de facto centreof coordination] is the new European Affairs Committee, chaired by William Hague”. Another observed that:

“The FCO has seen a bit of a resurgence in its role, especially since the election. The new EU Ministerand the Foreign Secretary are looking to reassert the FCO grip on the totality of EU negotiations.”

Others were somewhat more equivocal, however:

“The FCO’s recent resurgence is partly based on which Cab Committee makes decisions. Moreover, asChair of the European Affairs Committee (EAC), William Hague (Foreign Secretary) gets advice fromthe Cabinet Office as well as his own department.”

“The Foreign Secretary is [ultimately] responsible for coordination. He is served by the Cabinet Officeand to some extent the FCO on this. But it depends on who’s in power and who the ministers are as towhere the balance of power lies between the two. The links between the Cabinet Office and FCO fluctuateaccording to personalities more than governments. Whoever is chairing a Cabinet Committee is served byofficials from the Cabinet Office. [There is thus] a duality to it.”

There was some concern that the new division of responsibilities would not prove to be stable or enduring:37

“The secretarial side is provided by the Cabinet Office. The centre is thus somewhere around here. TheForeign Office is trying to be resurgent in European affairs. William Hague sees the Foreign Office as aplayer in policies across the piece. This may be tempered over time by the reality of what is possible orfeasible, which may change over time.”

Moreover, the idea that the FCO should occupy the central coordinating role was contested by oneinterviewee:

“David Cameron is leaving foreign policy much more to the FCO. Hague thinks it’s silly to duplicatecoordination at the Cabinet Office and the FCO—but then the logical place of a coordination mechanismwould be in the Cabinet Office given the cross-cutting nature of EU policy. [...] The FCO priority isdiplomatic relations and future enlargement. [...] [The system] needs a neutral broker given the cross-cutting nature of policy. Such a broker can’t sit at the FCO.”

This is an important view, which reflects the tensions inherent in a model centred on the ministry of foreignaffairs adopted by some EU member states; that the FCO is a line ministry and therefore fundamentally ill-suited to the role of central coordinator.

Conclusion

The role and status of the FCO in UK coordination of EU policy has changed significantly since the late1990s. However, the change in its responsibilities and organization raises important questions:

— Are the responsibilities of 10 Downing Street, the Cabinet Office and the FCO sufficiently welldemarcated?

— If the FCO no longer plays the traditional role of strategic thinking about the UK’s Europeanpolicy, has this function been lost to the system or has it moved elsewhere within Whitehall?

— Is Europe prominent enough within FCO priorities?

— Does the FCO have sufficient resources to manage its European responsibilities?

— Should the FCO’s functions be reduced to the promotion of trade or is traditional diplomacystill important?

— Is the FCO’s more central role in coordination compatible with its interests as a ministry.

1 February 2011

References

Kassim, H, Dittmer-Odell, M and Wright, N (2010) EU Policy Coordination in the United Kingdom, Studycommissioned for the Austrian Federal Chancellery, “Internal Coordination on EU Policy-Making in MemberStates: Processes and Structures”, led by Prof Dr Sonja Puntscher Riekmann, Prof Dr Andreas Dür, and DrHelmut P Gaisbauer, Centre of European Union Studies, University of Salzburg.

Kassim, H (2000) “United Kingdom” in Kassim, Peters and Wright (eds) (2000) The National Co-ordinationof EU Policy: the domestic level, Oxford University Press, pp 22–53.

37 Looking back over the longer term, one official observed that: “There has always been tension between the Foreign Office andCabinet Office as to where soul of European policy is. It is still developing under the new government.



Written evidence from Professor Dr Sonja Puntscher Riekmann, University of Salzburg

The Role of Ministries of Foreign Affairs in Domestic EU-Policy Co-ordination

A comparative perspective

EU-membership entails special arrangements for co-ordinating domestic positions to be presented andnegotiated at the EU level. The EU being a political system in continuous evolution, such arrangements needto be adjusted to novel provisions either enshrined in primary law or in institutional agreements between EUorgans. In that respect the Treaty of Lisbon has brought about a number of changes, in particular the growingimportance of the European Council with its permanent president, the expanded role of the European Parliamentin the ordinary legislation procedure and the new competencies of the High Representative of Common Foreignand Security Affairs. In all Member States Ministries of Foreign Affairs have played an important role in co-ordinating national positions before and after accession. Our comparative study however indicates that this roleis in a process of change, albeit to different degrees.

Our study, commissioned and financed by the Austrian Federal Chancellery, has compared the situation inthe following Member States: Czech Republic, France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Therationale guiding this choice was to compare by size, length of membership and last presidency of the EUCouncil. The study is empirically based on interviews that scholars working in the countries have carried outwith high officials of national administrations between June and October 2010 and according to a commonquestionnaire. The question about the role of Ministries of Foreign Affairs was one among others relating tothe overall question about how domestic EU-policy co-ordination is organised in the member statesinvestigated. Thus, the results presented below are a summary of the answers given by the interviewees.

There is some interesting variation across the five countries in the degree of centralisation of the process ofEU co-ordination. Centralisation is indicated by a shift of power from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs orother ministries to the Offices of Prime Ministers. This is first and foremost the case in the Czech Republicwhere EU-Policy co-ordination is managed by the Unit of the Minister for European Affairs in the Office ofGovernment (Prime Minister’s Office) where the Prime Minister is directly responsible for the unit. Since 2010the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an influential player before and after accession, is now only in charge to co-ordinate the Czech position with respect to the EU’s external affairs.

Similarly, in Sweden the process of co-ordination is largely centralised in the prime minister’s office.However, owing to the Swedish political culture of consensus it is less a process of top-down steering than ofgenerating common positions by reiterative processes of deliberation. Ministries enjoy less autonomy than inother member states and this holds true also for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

France and the UK appear to be intermediary cases as we can witness high degrees of centralisation, howeverthey diverge in detail. Due to the semi-presidential political system, in France the cabinet of the president hassince long played an important role and so has the prime minister’s office, the prime minister chairing theInter-ministerial Committee on Europe. The strengthened role of the European Council appears to enhance thisdevelopment, whereby the importance of the Prime Minister largely depends on the relationship with thepresident. Moreover, the Secrétariat Général des Affaires Européenes (SGAE) as an administrative unit wascreated not only to co-ordinate EU-Policy but also to advise the Prime Minister. France though is peculiar inthat the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economics play special roles as well. They became especiallyprominent in the course of the financial and economic crisis, whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs canhardly be considered as a key player in this respect. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as much as thetwo aforementioned ministries have strong links, even an “osmosis”, with the Permanent Representation inBrussels. These links give the Ministry of Foreign Affairs considerable advantages in terms of information andknowledge about EU decision-making processes.

In the United Kingdom the Cabinet Office that includes the Prime Minister’s Office plays a key role in EUpolicy co-ordination. However, due to the novelty of a coalition government EU policy co-ordination appearsless centralised and opaque than in the past two governments. In particular the European Affairs Committee(EAC) is to guarantee better formalisation and transparency. The role of the FCO is ambivalent: While facinga serious decline in the Blair-Brown era, it shows sign of new life symbolized by the Foreign Secretary’sselection as chair of the EAC. However, it no longer co-ordinates the “write around” which it has ceded to theCabinet’s Office, nor does it control communications between Whitehall and Brussels, since all departmentshave well-established relations with the Permanent Representation. It is therefore questionable whether theresurgence of the FCO is to last also because it is perceived as a line ministry rather than an honest broker.Other noteworthy changes are the decrease in FCO staff in the Permanent Representation and the growingconfinement of the FCO to foreign policy and global matters.

Germany also offers an ambivalent picture: Whereas on the one hand there is considerable continuity withpast structure of co-ordination, there is some evidence for a trend towards centralisation in the Chancellor’sOffice. However, much of the co-ordination remains in the hands of the Ministry of Economics and the Ministryof Foreign Affairs, the latter chairing also the Committee of European Affairs. Indeed, 13 respondents suggestedthat the de facto centre of policy co-ordination is the Foreign Ministry, whereas 11 mentioned the Chancellor’sOffice. This may be interpreted as a division of power that, however, is not necessarily only a result of thesystemic features of the German political system, but likely to stem from the fact that in recent German



governments, the Chancellor and the Minister of Foreign Affairs have been from different political parties.Moreover, recent announcements made by the German Chancellor in terms of better European economicgovernance could lead towards centralised co-ordination in her cabinet.

By way of conclusion we may hold that there is variation between FMA-, PM-centred and shared domesticco-ordination of EU-Policy-making:

FMA-centred co-ordination appears to be in decline in all Member States under investigation. However,Germany and the United Kingdom show signs of deviation in that the FMA retains important formal powersof co-ordination and may thus resist complete centralisation in the PM-Cabinet.

PM-centred co-ordination is most pronounced in the Czech Republic and in Sweden, albeit the Swedishsystem is marked by consensus-building between the centre and other ministries.

France does hardly fit into clear-cut categories, due to shared powers by the president and the Prime Minister,the latter being supported by the SGAE, but also due to the role of the Ministries of Finance and Economicsin particular in their relevant policy-fields.

2 February 2011

Letter from The Rt Hon Chris Huhne MP, Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate

Change, to Richard Ottaway MP, Chair of Foreign Affairs Committee

I am writing with regard to the Foreign Affairs Committee's ongoing inquiry into the role of the Foreignand Commonwealth Office in UK Government. I would like to contribute my views on the very helpful rolethat the FCO plays in international climate diplomacy.

My department works very closely with the FCO and we agree that an effective response to climate changeis in the UK’s fundamental national interest. It underpins both our security and our prosperity, DECC welcomesthe FCO’s role in taking this work forward internationally which complements DECC’s focus on the UNFCCCnegotiations process by deploying foreign policy assets to create the political conditions within nations thatwill be necessary for an effective response to climate change. This is crucial to underpinning the continuingeffort to reach a legally binding agreement, and thus create the policy confidence required to drive a low carbontransition. I have been very impressed with the enthusiastic work done by the FCO officials here in London aswell as by their network of posts around the world and the impact that it has had. We have been able to worktogether to deliver our mutual objectives eg in supporting the Mexican presidency in Cancun.

It is clear too that the targeted use of programme funds has been instrumental in both leveraging politicalchange and in ensuring that concrete actions on the ground build up to provide a coherent response. The FCO’scommitment to an inclusive approach to the use of these funds has meant that my officials were regularlyconsulted on their use under the Low Carbon High Growth SPF programme. I look forward to forthcomingannouncements on how the FCO’s programme funding will be organised in the future and my officials standready to give relevant input where required.

The FCO’s commitment to the climate change agenda has been further supported by the appointment of theForeign Secretary’s Special Representative. He has played a critical role in our progress to date by setting outthe compelling case for low carbon growth and in creating the international political conditions necessary foraction to prevent dangerous climate change. He has ensured that there is consistent engagement from FCOMinisters and officials in climate diplomacy which plays an important role in our joint efforts to ensure thatwe achieve a UN global binding deal which agrees effective action against climate change.

7 February 2011

Written evidence from the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS)

1. Thank you for giving PCS the opportunity to contribute a written submission to the Inquiry—The role ofthe FCO in UK Government.

2. PCS is the largest civil service union within the FCO, we have nearly 1,500 members at all grades whoare scattered throughout the world in some of the most difficult places in the world, serving their countrywith distinction.

3. We will focus with a snapshot on three areas that the Committee is looking at. How can the FCO bestuse its resources, how does the FCO interact with OGD’s and the role of FCO Posts overseas.

FCO Resources

4. PCS understand how tight resources are in the FCO but we have struggled, as staff representatives, overa number of months to try and engage constructively with senior management in the FCO on where bestresources might be used or indeed saved. Unfortunately, the senior management style over recent years hasbeen a culture of just do it, with little or no consultation with elected staff representatives (and staff). In looking



to make savings we believe that FCO management takes the easy route of targeting staff rather than some ofthe more costly estate and IT projects it has engaged in over the years. We think this is because it is potentiallyeasier than actually taking some tough decisions within these areas and the FCO’s poor record of project andprogramme management.

5. As in many parts of government we believe the FCO spends far too much of its budget on consultants,often with negligible or no discernible benefit. Between May and November 2010 alone the FCO spent nearly£12 million on consultants and in 2010 nearly £5 million was paid to consultants for “rebranding” the FCOcorporate image. In a climate of tight budgets we believe resources must be focused on “front line services”and roles supporting these services.

6. In order to make some of the savings required by the recent spending review, the FCO have said theywill target so called “back office” functions in order to concentrate resources on “front line diplomacy”. Webelieve there is a false distinction between the front line and back office. The reality is the front line cannotdo what it is supposed to without back office support. We believe cuts may focus on finance and othercorporate service directorates who carry out vital work which ensures the overseas network of posts can operateeffectively. If jobs are cut in these areas, the work will not go away but will be passed on to posts themselvesand often to fairly senior diplomats who will have to spend time carrying out administrative work rather thanfront line diplomacy. The FCO are looking to make cuts to administrative costs of £100 million over the nextfour years. We believe this is simply not sustainable and will damage the capability of the FCO. It is alsolikely to lead to substantial job losses and reduced career opportunities amongst UK based staff. This willfurther damage the morale of FCO staff who have already seen a cut to budgets of around 20% in real termsdue to the decision of the previous government to remove the Overseas Price Mechanism (OPM).

FCO Interaction with Other OGD’s

7. We have noticed in the past a tendency in dealing with other departments who have an international rolethat the FCO seems to want to take a lead in its attempt to gather political kudos and control the debate. Howsuccessful they have been in achieving this is open to question.

8. Relations with the Treasury have not been good with a feeling the FCO has not been good at getting theresources it required. The most striking recent example of this was the decision to abolish the OPM. This tooka big chunk out of the FCO’s budget and has only now been partially restored. The Treasury also took a hardline in asking for big cuts to the allowances received by diplomatic staff working overseas. OGD with staffoverseas took a much smaller hit, with FCO staff feeling their own department should have taken a harder linein negotiations with the Treasury.

9. The responsibility for issuing UK visas, which was previously jointly administered by the FCO andUKBA, has now passed over completely to UKBA, although there is a service level agreement (SLA) whichgives the FCO in theory some say in this work. The issuing of visas is still an important part of many FCOembassies and consulates around the world and 40% of posts should be filled by FCO staff. However despitethe SLA the FCO seems to have a long term policy of having less and less to do with visa work with fewerand fewer FCO staff now working in visa sections. We do not believe current arrangements with UKBA areworking well and should be revised so the FCO has a greater role in the issuing of visa which we believeshould be an important part of its service delivery overseas.

FCO Posts

10. The network of overseas posts is the key to delivering the new overall priorities for the FCO of security,prosperity and consular services. There is much debate at present about the impact of the cuts on this network.PCS believes it would be a big mistake to see any significant shrinkage of the overseas network. In order tomaintain our diplomatic influence and to seek to increase overseas trade in a rapidly changing world, HMGwill still need a physical presence and UK based staff in most countries around the world. In our view, postsalso still have a key role to play in providing a full range of consular services and help to UK citizens overseas.In recent years there has been a big increase in UK citizens needing consular help or other assistance from UKembassies. With current patterns of work and travel this is likely to increase. In times of emergency or crisisUK citizens (and their MPs) expect their embassy to help them and FCO staff do a fantastic job, often indifficult or dangerous circumstances. This help is often required immediately and this would simply not bepossible if the UK reduced its presence to regional rather than in-country in some parts of the world.

11. In order for the FCO network of overseas posts to function effectively we believe the right balance needsto be struck in staffing them with a combination of UK based civil servants and locally engaged staff. Thereis no doubt that locally engaged staff play an important role in posts around the world. However we have nowreached the point where 67% of all FCO staff globally are not UK citizens. We believe this has pushed thebalance too far and that this is now having a detrimental impact on overseas posts. The reason for increasedlocalisation has frankly been one of crude cost cutting with no improvement to service delivery. A goodexample of this is the recent localisation strand of the Corporate Services Programme with which the Committeeis familiar. Anecdotally, we understand that replacing UK based management officers with local staff has notseen any improvement in service delivery. Because of security concerns there are many tasks formerly carriedout by UK staff which locally engaged staff cannot perform with this work drifting up to more senior staff



who are having to spend more and more time carrying out admin tasks rather than concentrating on otherdiplomatic work. We fear that the FCO is planning more localisation of posts overseas. We believe it wouldbe folly to do this without a proper evaluation of the impact of localisation in the FCO in terms of the impacton UK posts overseas, career opportunities and jobs for UK FCO staff who will have much reduced chancesof working overseas and also whether it is in the long term interests of the country to have a UK foreignservice staffed mainly by non UK citizens.

8 February 2011

Written evidence from Carne Ross

I am a former British diplomat who resigned after giving evidence to the Butler Inquiry in 2004 (my lastposting had been as Britain’s Middle East and particularly Iraq specialist at the UN Security Council in NewYork). I then founded and now head Independent Diplomat, the non-profit diplomatic advisory group, based infive offices around the world, which advises various countries and governments, and other political groups, ondiplomatic strategy. Our clients include the Government of South Sudan, various island states (whom we adviseon the climate change negotiations), Eastern European states (on their relations with the EU), the POLISARIOFront of the Western Sahara and Somaliland. In our work around the world, my staff and I encounter the workof British embassies as well as the FCO in London. We also hear the views of foreign diplomats and otherswho deal with the FCO both in London and overseas. The views below are my personal views, but also reflectinformal impressions gathered by my colleagues in Independent Diplomat.

The impressions are these:

— The FCO has made significant progress in loosening promotion and career progression, includingby promoting talent quickly to senior posts. For instance, the new High Commissioner in Nigeriais a (very able) forty-something who began in the FCO as a filing clerk at 16. The “buggins’ turn”culture has ended, although there is still a sense that some overseas heads of missions are in placethanks more to the longevity of their service than other qualifications. The FCO is still lucky toenjoy in general a high quality of individuals in its staff, who are widely esteemed within thediplomatic profession internationally. (This however is a virtue that should not be taken forgranted.)

— However, the promotion of younger staff has had the knock-on effect of blocking careerprogression for many, with a growing “log-jam” in promotions across the board. Combined withthe budget-driven downgrading of many slots, including overseas, it has noticeable effects onopportunities for staff and therefore morale. A number of FCO staff have approached IndependentDiplomat for work, or for advice about leaving the FCO, if that is any indicator. This is on top ofthe wave of staff who left in 2006–08, taking with them considerable accumulated experience.

— More seriously however, something seems to have happened to the “brain” of the FCO in recentyears. I am not alone in noticing that the quality of UK foreign policy thinking seems to havedeclined. In a number of cases, UK policy-makers seem overly content to stick to superficialgeneralities, rather than the more deeply-considered strategies for getting from the current situationto the desired end-state.

— For instance, Independent Diplomat has followed the diplomacy on Sudan very closely, inparticular the North-South issue and the just-passed referendum on Southern self-determination. Ihave observed closely the work of the US State Department on this question and have been struckby its thoroughness and openness to outside thinking. The relevant offices of the State Departmenthave for instance organised weekend brainstorming sessions to “game out” different scenarios inthe North-South process; they also regularly invite outside experts to their offices to discuss policyideas with great frankness and openness (I have been present for such discussions)—above allthese discussions are characterised by an atmosphere of invitation to criticism and ideas. Bycontrast, despite the evident abilities of the UK officials involved, the UK has not played asignificant role in this diplomatic process. At the State Department, the UK is talked of in thesame way as Norway, the other of the three-member “Troika” on Sudan—helpful but not terriblysignificant.

— Of course, the American thoroughness is a function of the very intensive role the US is playingon this issue—itself a function of US power and influence—but of course the one reflects theother: in other words, influence is partly a function of preparation and deep strategy—and indeedthe less influential a country is, the more essential deep preparation of policy to secure influenceis. Another more provocative example illustrates the same point: When I first attended UK-USbilateral discussions on Iraq and the Middle East, the UK delegation would bring its own agenda,and on each point its own developed ideas on the way forward. This was in 1998. By the time Ileft the UK Mission in 2002, the UK delegation no longer brought its own agenda but simplyworked off and responded to US suggestions.



— This last example may help explain what is going on. When I first joined the FCO in 1989, therewas a real sense within the “Office” that the FCO should look at the world, decide its objectivesand design strategy to reach those objectives, while seeking to persuade others of those goals.These days, the British diplomatic machine appears more reactive: responding rather than shaping.And there is no doubt that the gross failures of policy over the years since 9/11, and thesubordination of UK foreign policy to that of the US, have exacerbated a trend that post-imperialdecline was already evoking.

— To be frank, this is less a deficit of officials than a failure of leadership and political vision, sharedby both major political parties. Officials reflect the ambitions of their political masters. But this isalso a vicious circle into which, I’m afraid, the FCO has clearly sunk. With little politicalimagination or willingness for risk at the top, officials are discouraged from ambition and creativity,but also the hard grind necessary for the thorough preparation of detailed strategy. I watched myseniors carefully in the FCO during my years there, and realised, as others have, that the qualitymost essential to promotion was not risk-taking or creativity, but caution and an exquisite abilityto tune one’s own views to the prevailing mood of the day (though there were and are somenotable exceptions to this generality). The relative decline of the UK as an international power,inevitable with the rise of China, India and the rest, should not provoke a parallel decline in theambition or strategic thinking of the FCO, rather the opposite: indeed there are manifoldopportunities for exciting strategies and initiatives on myriad issues from disarmament todemocratization. But the self-confidence, imagination and dedication required need to be rekindled,and deliberately built into the structures and practices of the FCO. Independent Diplomat wouldbe happy to provide ideas if requested (we often advise governments on the structure of theirdiplomatic system, and are skilled in “building-in” practices that encourage innovation).

— There is a final issue, which applies to every government and not only the FCO. The world isbecoming rapidly more complicated—more a Jackson Pollock painting than a chessboard, andeven a Pollock is inadequate to convey the multitudinous, dynamic nature of the flows that areshaping events today. On any particular issue, an extraordinary cast of players is on the stage,many with growing influence. In Sudan, again it was clear to Independent Diplomat that newactors have become more significant than ever. One philanthropic foundation has supported hugenumbers of important NGOs in the South, some wielding considerable political influence, oftenun-noticed; a film star has been more often quoted on the conduct of the referendum than JimmyCarter or Thabo Mbeki—ostensibly in charge of the international process. Major oil companieshave been an important behind-the-scenes influence in Khartoum and Juba, as has a telecomsbillionaire. That same film star, supported by a highly media-savvy coterie of activists, hasinfluenced the White House to emphasise the issue of Abyei over other North-South issues in thecoming negotiations before the new state will be established. Governments that concentrate theirenergies mainly on other governments risk missing the big picture (did the Embassy in Cairopredict the current turmoil? What are their contacts with the emerging new class of Egyptianleaders and youth activists—or the Muslim Brothers?).

— This fragmented, globalised world of multiple actors (where in fact few of them are states) isimmensely difficult for conventional structures to respond to: indeed ultimately this world suggestsa fundamental challenge to centralised decision-making. I am increasingly convinced that it is nolonger possible to sit in an office (particularly a closed one) in Whitehall and produce credibleanalyses of what might happen in Egypt—or China—or terrorism. The world is simply toocomplex. But to respond, qualities like transparency, openness to new thinking (and outsideadvice), and cutting-edge technological aptitude are clearly necessary. From the frustration I hearfrom the ranks, the declining esteem in which British strategic thinking is held, but above all thenature of the world today, it is important that the Foreign Office very deliberately review itsstructure and culture to ensure that these qualities are the most manifest in British diplomacy inthe 21st Century.

8 February 2011

Written evidence from Lord Howe of Aberavon CH

1. I begin with an apology for the tardiness of this submission, as well as for the relative narrowness of itssubject matter. Narrowness because I seek to distinguish between the many subjects in respect of which theFCO, its outposts and its staff, are acting:

(a) On the one hand as administrators, agents or servants:

And, on the other hand:

(b) Those in which they are engaged much more broadly on questions of policy—as advisors,assessors, advocates, policy-makers or actors.

2. It is the second of these alternative objectives which is, and always has been, the primary purpose of theFCO and Diplomatic Service—namely the identification and assessment of foreign policy objectives andproblems and the consequent formulation, presentation and implementation of policy. It is this which must



primarily determine the scale, qualifications and location of the Diplomatic Service. Ideally, and so far asresources allow, this should provide for presence and representation in most, if not all, national, and, of course,all international agencies.

3. Notwithstanding the widespread use and familiarity of the English language, the success of our DiplomaticService has, for many years and almost universally, owed much to the fact that our representatives have beenfluent in the language of the country in which they serve and thus well able to understand and present mattersof concern.

4. All our overseas posts should be capable, to the extent that this appears to be necessary, of dealing withall the other purposes identified in sub-paragraph (a) above, as well as in the management of diplomatic policy.Some additional posts are perceived to be necessary for these secondary purposes.

5. The FCO and DFID (or ODA): current arrangements differ, of course, from those which prevailed until1992, when ODA was itself a part of the FCO, but with its own Minister in charge. One other difference sincethen has been the determination to meet an objective (long recommended by the United Nations) of 0.7% ofGDP for international development. In those days of severe financial constraint, we confined our commitmentto 0.36% of GDP—and I believe that we could be similarly constrained at the present time.

6. Against that background, it must never be forgotten that the primary purpose of the FCO and its resourcesmust be the formulation and implementation of the Government’s foreign policy. Beyond a doubt that policyhad to have been, and continue to be, approved by Cabinet and, of course, the Prime Minister. But, simplyenough, it is essential for that decision-making process to have had the benefit of being founded upon advicefrom the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary (and thus from the Service) about the objectives, nature andsuccess or otherwise of that policy. Nothing, of course should be done to limit the availability to Governmentof the totality of such advice procured by and from the Diplomatic Service and Foreign Secretary alike. Asexplained towards the end of Annexe (a) below, it is crucially important that the forthcoming candour of suchadvice should be communicated and not withheld.

7. In conclusion, and on account of my failure to summarise them in more accessible form, I attach threedocuments which serve to amplify my submissions:

(a) “Diplomacy: Diet of Diversity”, a speech delivered at Buckingham University, January 1997, andsubsequently elsewhere.

(b) “British Foreign Policy: The Folly of Iraq”, a chapter from a book of foreign policy essayspublished in 2008.38

(c) “Friendship through dignity”, a short essay about the Monarchy, published in First Magazine,June 2002.39

Diplomacy: Diet Of Diversity

Notes for a Speech by The Rt Hon The Lord Howe of Aberavon on Tuesday 28 January 1997 at BuckinghamUniversity

Some of you may remember a favourite story of mine from my days in the Foreign Office, told by a seniordiplomat, when his seven year old daughter asked him about his job. “Daddy, what does a diplomat do? Heexplained the meetings, the talks, the bridge-building, the international problems and so on. She was silent fora moment and then she said, “Now I see! A diplomat is a mat between two countries, for people to wipe theirfeet on!”

I have to confess to having been similarly sceptical myself, during my time—in the early 1970s—as SolicitorGeneral, about the role of law in international affairs. One of my first tasks in that job was to answer an inquiryfrom the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about some aspects of the Anglo-Icelandic fisheries dispute. Thiswas a very ill-starred saga, that ail-too remorsely led on to one “Cod War” after another, each more disastrousthan its predecessor. The whole story was almost too much for a mere common lawyer like myself—someonewho had been brought up on domestic law, where in theory remedies followed smoothly from the exercise ofcompulsory jurisdiction.

I still remember the shocked look on the faces of the Foreign Office officials, when I told them that theywere extremely foolish to be seeking advice about a branch of the law that was largely mythical—and likelyto be as useless as it was undignified, as toothless as it was imprecise. How could it be otherwise, I asked,when recourse to force was already destined to be the ultimate arbiter, and when the International Court ofJustice, if they got that far, would deliver a judgement so ambiguous that not one of the key questions wouldbe resolved?

I was, I fear, all too right about that. Even so, I should have known better than to brush aside a whole bodyof law just because, at that time and on that point, it was in a state of flux and uncertainty. Because, as Grotiusfirst emphasised, a key feature of international law is that it is evolutionary. Observance of law depends not38 Ed. Robert Harvey, The World Crisis: the Way Forward after Iraq (London: 2008), pp 65–74, supplied to the Committee in

hard copy.39 “Friendship through dignity: Interview with Rt Hon Lord Howe of Aberavon CH QC”, First Magazine, June 2002, supplied to

the Committee in hard copy.



upon sanctions, but upon acceptance of the law in the absence of any central executive authority that canactually enforce it.

Louis Henkin captured the very essence of this concept, when he described international law as an“infrastructure of agreed assumptions, practices, commitments, expectations and reliances”. And that ratherflabby description became familiar and acceptable to me in my later roles, as a client of international lawyersfirst as Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs, then as Chancellor and Chairman of the IMF InterimCommittee, and finally as Foreign Secretary. It was I who then became accustomed to accept and rely uponthe routine, unquestioned working of the rules of GATT, of the articles of the IMF and the World Bank, thetacit understandings of policy, that shape the so-called rules of the Paris Club and the OECD consensus andso on.

Like Moliere’s bourgeois gentilhomme, who was startled to learn that he had been speaking prose all hislife, I became surprised to learn that I was taking international law—and thus a large part of diplomacy—actually for granted.

In much the same way, misunderstandings in other fields can be due to a failure to recognise law as it exists.Even with domestic law, the individual is often hardly, or only hazily, aware that he is actually enmeshed incompliance with the law. Like good health or a happy marriage, it is mostly unnoticed and taken for granted—until the routine is interrupted.

The parallel with matrimony is actually quite apt for the mixture of law and diplomacy that governsinternational relations. I remember going to London airport to meet Janos Kadar, then Secretary General of theHungarian Communist Party, on his first visit, certainly in that office, to London, in 1985. On the journey intoLondon from the airport, we were engaged in one of those lively (but inconclusive) conversations appropriateto such an occasion; and I said that the relationship between East and West (still miles apart at that time) wasvery like marriage without divorce. For we had no choice but to get on with each other, as best we may. Kadarresponded by amplifying the metaphor. It is much worse than that, he said, because it was an arranged marriage;we didn’t even choose each other in the first place.

I might have added then, but I didn’t think of it until later, that it was not unlike a polygamous, arrangedmarriage. For we are, each of us, surrounded by reluctant brides with whom we have to get on, even thoughsome of them don’t necessarily subscribe even to the same religious faith or moral code as we do. Since thenI have thought it is worse even than that, because the polygamy is itself kaleidoscopic. It is like a kind ofendless, multinational Paul Jones.

On the same day that I was hosting Kadar for lunch, I was by extraordinary coincidence—due to give dinnerto Otto von Habsburg, now as then a German Member of the European Parliament and the rightful claimantto the Austro/Hungarian throne, had it still been there. When I mentioned this in my lunchtime toast to Kadar,he proclaimed his absolute delight that both he and Otto Hapsburg were actually so old they were both bornas citizens of the Austro/Hungarian empire. So the day was for him almost like an old boys’ reunion.

And so to Vienna, and to a breakfast for NATO Foreign Ministers which three or four years later I hostedin the splendid British Embassy residence in that City. As we were leaving the breakfast table, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, the Danish Foreign Minister, looked around our splendid Embassy and said, “Tell me, Geoffrey, is thisbuilding a monument to Britain’s future or to Britain’s past?” “It is a monument,” I replied “to Austria’s past”.For it had been designed, of course, to support our Ambassador’s accreditation to what had been, in its day, atruly huge empire.

Vienna is quite a good place at which to return to consideration of my given topic of diplomacy. For to thecommon man (I dare say even to the common woman)—by which I mean the world at large-diplomacy mustoften sound a remote and obscure science, a hollow and pompous activity. And as a one-time electedrepresentative of the common man—who became obliged ex officio to try to practice diplomacy—I think it isa pity that it has got such a bad name.

Some may think that diplomacy is something for consenting adults to pursue behind closed doors, after acocktail or two. And if the diplomatic revels all were ended, if the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palazzosand the solemn temples all vanished, leaving not a rack behind, should anyone give a hoot about it? Well,should they? My answer is that they should. Indeed, despite the rather dismissive title under which I amtalking, I don’t propose just one hoot for diplomacy. I shall propose three cheers for it, from the common man.Because his life is affected more and more by the work of diplomats in today’s world.

Of course, over centuries, the techniques and styles of diplomacy have changed. Consider the Congress ofVienna, in 1814, which settled the affairs of Europe for decades. Indeed it re-drew the very map of Europe.Yet that was not so much a diplomatic event, as a brilliant long-running social gathering. Everyone who wasanyone dropped in. Two emperors, two empresses, four kings, one queen, two heirs to the throne, two grandduchesses and three princes. And during the nine months of the Congress, there was time for hunts, shootingparties, musical rides and theatrical performances. The English characteristically even laid on a fancy-dressball, inviting everyone to appear in Elizabethan costume. But that turned out to be rather a flop, as only theEnglish actually dressed up for it. No wonder a wag said at the time, commenting on the leisurely pace, “lecongres ne marche pas mais II danse!”



Another, more recent, example was the first trip of the then Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, to the UNGeneral Assembly in 1946. After a week crossing the Atlantic, he encamped in New York for six weeks. Hegot back to London just in time for Christmas. He took off again in March for seven weeks negotiations inMoscow: the train took four days to carry him across Europe. All that is a pretty far cry from today’s supersonicdiplomacy. In my last 12 months as Foreign Secretary, I attended 23 meetings of European ministers, none ofwhich lasted longer than 48 hours.

One thing had not changed because at least two of them—in that era, between all 35 nations of the thenConference on Security and Confidence in Europe—did take place in Vienna. But there was a world ofdifference between the nine months long Congress of 1814 and my own two day mission in 1989. Fromshooting parties to shuttles, the style of diplomacy has changed beyond recognition.

The change is deeper even than that because today’s ceaseless activity takes place under an intense mediaspotlight. And Foreign Ministers are held directly to account, not just to Parliaments but to electors. Boudoirdiplomacy is out. For Ministers today, hushed voices behind closed doors are not sufficient—although, despitethe mistaken impression of those like Sir Richard Scott who believe to the contrary, such confidentiality maystill sometimes be necessary.

President Wilson’s dream at Versailles of “open covenants openly arrived at” may still be a dream, butpolicies must be explained and defended. For democracy, as Balfour rightly observed, is government byexplanation.

So European diplomacy in particular is conducted no longer in a hall of mirrors, but in a house of glass.Ministers are catapulted from their airplanes into their conference seats; they switch on their microphones,plough through their overcrowded agendas and within moments they are straight out before the world’s press,recounting the day’s events.

The common man or those who represent him with the intrusive cameras—expects no less. And it is rightthat people should be informed, so far as possible, of decisions which will affect their lives: but again I ask,just how fully informed can they rightly expect to be?

Not that the common man of past centuries was unaffected by diplomacy, particularly by the failures ofdiplomacy. But the army which burnt down his shack and stole his pigs was generally perceived as a regrettableact of God. Bungling diplomats or their political masters had nothing to do with it: even the soldiers whofought in the First World War had very little idea why it had been started.

So we come to another difference between today’s diplomacy and that of an earlier age. Diplomacy stillmeans two or more parties—or countries—arriving at a point, where—they can agree a course of action andbe confident of winning the assent of their own governments. But consent must now go beyond that, to theconsent of their own peoples. Diplomacy reaches across the national divides, but it also reaches back into thehearts of nations.

Reading the other day Peter Hopkirk’s Setting the East Ablaze, I was reminded that a century ago the sub-continental “great game” was played by a handful of international statesmen. Nowadays, by contrast and forexample, the Maastricht or the Dayton agreements touch directly the lives of millions of people.

Diplomacy in recent years has had to adapt to a large change in the number and character of actors and unitsin international relations. The countries have multiplied. When Bevin sailed to New York, there were 22members of the United Nations; today the old empires have fragmented into component parts, each a sovereignstate, each eager for diplomatic rights.

And there has been a corresponding decline of the state as a principal actor, whether as a client or as asubject of international law. It has been matched by the growth in importance of individual citizens as theintended beneficiaries of the system. That is an inevitable consequence of linkages between, and inter-penetration of, societies and economies—all as a result of the way in which trade, travel, technology, tourism,and television have been competing with each other in the demolition of distance and time.

Problems destroyed old words: and conflicts have leapt barriers, so that we are, across borders and inChester Crocker’s

“Living amidst a massive erosion sovereignty and a sharp decline in autonomy of governments”.

of national institutional

So it is that the individual Canadian Eskimo finds his entire seal-culling livelihood destroyed as a result ofa resolution of the European Parliament, of which he has never heard. Or the people of Lockerbie, a smalltown in Scotland, find their community turned into a tragic funeral pyre for hundreds of innocent Americans,as the result of a nationalist conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean.

And the impact of diplomacy is swifter than ever before, with an almost universal international vocabularyto drive it forward: Perestroika, Mandela, Intafada, Tiananmen, CNN (God help us!).

So far, I have been talking more about change than about diversity. But from the point of view of the BritishForeign Secretary, the agenda certainly does not lack diversity. On my own arrival at the FCO, I was confrontedby a host of what the Chinese describe as “the problems left over by history” that obstacle course constructed



by my Victorian predecessors: from the Falkland Islands, to Hong Kong, to Gibraltar, to South Africa—and(long pre-Victorian) Ireland.

Then there are the wider problems, again because of the UK’s much broader history. There is our membershipof the United Nations Security Council, with the obligation (as well as the right,) which derives from ourpossession of the UNSC veto. It is an obligation to strive for agreement at the heart of the world and there towork, for example, for a whole range of bargains between East and West on arms control. There is our role asa member of the European Union and the extent to which our history has cast us deeply into the problems of theMiddle East—the Arab/Israel dispute, the Iran/Iraq conflict, and, of course, terrorism and all the implications ofthat.

Let me try to illustrate from that assortment of experience, certain key qualifications for the practise ofdiplomacy.

First, there is the need for a strong nerve, the willingness to go, before concluding negotiations, right up tothe wire. In June 1984 at Fontainebleau, we were five years on from the start of negotiations over the “bloodyBritish budget question”, as Roy Jenkins described it. We had set out with a determination to secure a two-thirds abatement of our net contribution to the European Community Budget. And at Fontainebleau ChancellorKohl and President Francois Mitterrand had finally edged their way above 50%. Eventually we came to thepoint when 65% was on offer. Our advisers, Michael Butler and David Williamson, Margaret Thatcher and Iwithdrew into one of the tiny rooms off the main hall in the Palace, to discuss the offer with FrancoisMitterrand, who was presiding over the Council. We said we wanted not 65 but 66%. (We were being generousin foregoing the additional two thirds of a percentage point!) Mitterrand replied that we could not get morethan the 65% he had offered. If we wanted more than that, we should have to go back to the Council Chamber.Margaret Thatcher had no hesitation in agreeing that we should do just that—indeed not agreeing, but asserting,with great vigour, that we had to go back to the Conference Chamber. And so we got our extra 1%. It wasworth getting. Because, to the tax payers of this country it was worth, over 10 years, no less than £150 million.But it is an illustration of the test of nerve that is sometimes involved.

The 1984 negotiations over the future of Hong Kong offer a similar example. We there thought initially thatwe were under pressure, as a result of Deng Xiaoping’ s firm determination from the very outset, in September1982—that the negotiations would be over within two years. We broke the back of the bargaining by July1984. So two months then remained for the intensely detailed discussions that still had to be completed. Deng’stwo year limit was looming ahead of us. Within two or three days of the expiry of that period, I pressed onceagain (in direct correspondence with Foreign Minister, Wu Xueqian) for the inclusion of two crucial phrases:in relation to the Legislative Council, the key words, “constituted by elections”, and, in relation to the executive,the equally important rubric, “accountable to the legislature”. It was only by not blinking during those last vitalhours that we got those two essential provisions into the Joint Declaration. So, ironically enough, the Chinesedeadline turned out to work to our advantage. But we were taking a high risk in going as far as we did downthat road. And in recent years we might, perhaps, have tried to press that advantage a little too far and too fast.

Another example, again from the Hong Kong negotiations, illustrates a quite different need—the needsometimes simply to play for time. This arose in my last crucial meeting with Deng Xiaoping, at which wesecured the final agreement. For several days I had been going through the regular Peking routine of negotiatingin turn with a series of increasingly senior Chinese ministers—the Hong Kong Minister, Ji Peng Fei, theForeign Minister, Wu Xueqian, the Prime Minister, Zhao Ziyang. Remarkably, by the time we reached DengXiaoping, at the pinnacle of the process—I am speaking now of July 1984—we had already got into placeevery principal building block that we had needed to complete the agreement. Yet there I was, facing theprospect of a two hour meeting with the great man (for that was what our diaries provided for) but with nothingto do except to consolidate what had already been achieved.

I was reminded of my days in distant, humble court rooms, years ago, when I had been obliged to leadevidence from my own client or cross-examine my opponent’s in such a fashion as not to dislodge any of theconcessions so carefully secured over the preceding days. So for a lot of that two hour period I found myselfdiscussing literally anything but the real agenda encouraging Deng on to whatever he wanted to talk about:“one country, two systems”; did it apply to a divided Korea? or to a divided Germany? The United States: didthat strange country have two governments or three? or was it four? And so on—with anything that kept Dengaway from the carefully bundled heap of spillikins, that we had put together.

That required some nerve. My anxiety was that the great man might utter a syllable, which would dislodgesome key component. So it was with a huge sigh of relief—from the entire British negotiating team—that Isteered him finally into harbour. Deng’s closing benediction led straight into an invitation to Her Majesty theQueen to visit China and to Margaret Thatcher to come to Peking herself, to sign the final agreement. We werehome and dry.

Another quality that is often needed is the ability to judge the mood of the moment: I recollect one occasionwhen my own judgement fell sadly short of what was called for. When I was in Prague in 1985, as the guestof Foreign Minister Chnoupek, he took us on a bizarre tour of the residential flat at his Foreign Ministry. Hispurpose was to take us into the bathroom, from the window of which the former Czech Foreign Minister, JanMasaryk, so Chnoupek said—had fallen to his death. (As you will know the accepted version on our side ofthe world is that he was pushed to his death by the Secret Police). Chnoupek went into a long explanation:



this, he said, was the bath, in which Masaryk had taken the drugs which induced him to make his suicidejump. I responded, with characteristic British under-statement: “As you know, we have a rather differentaccount of that incident”. Not long afterwards, as I heard later, the Danish Foreign Minister, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, was treated to the same tour. And, to my shame and to his great credit, he responded much moretersely: “Don’t give me that crap, Chnoupek”.

I have another example of an instant response, which judged the need of the moment very well—this timefrom Margaret Thatcher. It was at the Copenhagen summit of the European Community, in December 1987under the chairmanship of Danish Prime Minister Schluter. We had negotiated long and hard into the night, inan attempt to resolve the tense agricultural agenda. Well past midnight, Schluter decided we could go on nolonger. The discussion had to be adjourned to the German presidency in the New Year.

Just at that moment, as we were all packing our papers away, President Mitterrand suddenly spoke up. Toour astonishment, he commenced a mournful soliloquy about the desperate situation in which Europe founditself. We were near the end of the road, we should have to start again, go back to the drawing board, rethinkwhether we could manage with any more than the six original members—and so on and on and on. We all satin sombre silence through about twenty minutes of this.

When he finished, and to my surprise, Margaret Thatcher, sitting right beside me, suddenly piped up: “Idon’t think it’s been like that at all, President Mitterrand. I think we’ve had a very good meeting with Mr.Schluter. We have very nearly finished our agenda. And I am sure that when we meet again in the New Year,under Chancellor Kohl’s chairmanship, then exactly as we did under your brilliant Presidency at Fontainebleauin 1984, we shall complete everything we have to do. So, cheer up President Mitterrand, cheer up!”.

He looked for a moment as though he had been slapped in the face with a wet fish. Then he sparkled to life.“I think”, he said, “that Madame Thatcher is even more alluring when she is saying ‘yes’ than when she issaying ‘no’”.

That was an exceptional case. On other occasions the instant comment is often much less helpful. Oneexample occurred at the end of the Nassau meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government in 1985. We hadsuccessfully limited the list of additional measures that the Commonwealth had agreed to take against SouthAfrica at that time. Margaret Thatcher and I were sitting alongside each other at the subsequent pressconference. The Prime Minister was asked to comment on the scale of the concessions Britain had been obligedto make to achieve this deal. She raised her hand, with her thumb and fore-finger just two or three millimetresapart, “only a tiny little bit”, she said. This jubilant affront to all the other heads of government with whom wehad negotiated such a modest deal remained for years a grave black mark upon our Commonwealth reputation.

Sometimes one can be lucky even after such an error. There was a comparable incident after an importantChequers meeting with Garrett Fitzgerald, the Irish Prime Minister, in November 1984. The two PrimeMinisters gave separate press conferences after the meeting. Margaret Thatcher was asked what she thought ofthree key propositions recently put forward by the so-called Irish forum. She listed the propositions conciselyand dismissed each in turn: “out, out, out”. A few minutes later the Irish Prime Minister was asked for hisreaction to this seemingly brutal dismissal of the Irish case. Britain was indeed lucky in the man that had toface that challenge. For, as Fitzgerald says in his own book, Mrs. Thatcher’s “out, out, out” was for him agreat humiliation. But it nevertheless served, more than anything else, to lower the expectations of the Irishfrom negotiations. In those circumstances, he explained, he was ready to dismiss the provocation withoutcomment. It was, he said, “a short-term price worth paying for the long-term advantage”. This is an interestingillustration of the way in which one skilfully judged instant reaction can off-set the potentially serious adverseimpact of another.

By contrast—and I don’t like having to say this—it is clear, I think, that our present Prime Minister wasperhaps a little less than wise in proclaiming, at the end of the Maastricht negotiations, that it was “Game, setand match”: for the United Kingdom. The safest rule, I am sure, is always to regard the conclusion ofnegotiations, however successful, as what I call a “no crow area”—for either side. It is always a victory formankind, a victory for Europe, a victory for the human race. And just occasionally, sotto voce, an achievementfor your own country as well!

All this illustrates, I believe, that even in the arid field of diplomacy, people matter, individuals do play,even today, an immensely crucial part. The triangular relationship between Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachevand Margaret Thatcher was one of the key components of the half century in which we have lived. There wereonly two people in my experience—perhaps three—to whom Margaret Thatcher instinctively deferred. Thetwo were Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The third (and how could it be anybody else?) was HisMajesty King Hussein: no man is more courteous than he; he thus commands an instinctive deference.

The relationship which Margaret Thatcher established with the two world leaders was crucial. The fact that,after that first meeting on 16th December 1984, Margaret Thatcher was able to identify Mikhail Gorbachev asa man “with whom I can do business” (note the “I”, by the way) and was then able to commend that insightto Ronald Reagan marked a turning point in the diplomatic history of our age. That was one episode wherepersonalities mattered crucially.

Another story makes the same point, more obviously. It is the difference between Andrei Gromyko andEduard Shevardnadze. I remember several discussions with Gromyko about human rights. When I raised this



first with him, at a meeting in Stockholm, he said that I was “lowering the tone” of the conversation. When Iraised it for the second time, in Moscow, he responded not at all. On the third occasion, after we had givenhim lunch at our Ambassador’s flat in New York, I had decided to raise it again, but in a rather low-keyfashion, as we moved from the table to coffee. “By the way”, I said, “can I come back to the names ofSakharov, Sharansky and the rest?” He looked at me—and this is difficult to believe—with a twinkle in hiseye, and said, “Sakharov, Sakharov? that is the Russian word for sugar—no thank you, I do not take sugar inmy coffee.” And that was the end of that topic.

I gained a sharply contrasting insight into the style of Eduard Shevardnadze, when I met the thenMozambiqan Foreign Minister, now President, Chissano, travelling from the airport to the City of Maputo. Hetold me how, not many weeks before, he had been in Moscow and destined to spend an evening at the Bolshoiwith Shevardnadze. Shevardnadze said “Look, we are having rather a good talk, do you really want to go tothe ballet?” and Chissano replied, “If you don’t, no”. So they went on talking throughout the entire evening.Shevardnadze spent most of the time asking Chissano a whole range of questions directed to the agenda “isRussia getting her foreign policy right in Africa?” The idea that Andrei Gromyko would ever have behaved inthat way is beyond belief. This story shows the huge difference made to our world by one man, alongsideMikhail Gorbachev, in that country.

May I, without immodesty, offer some other illustrations of the value of personal relationships, based uponthe developing contacts, in course of the Hong Kong negotiations between the Chinese Foreign Minister, WuXueqian, and myself? I recall almost the first moment of our first evening together at the ritual opening banquetin the Diaoyutai guesthouse in Peking. I pointed to an attractive chandelier on one of the tables and asked howold it was. Wu said “Oh, not more than 300 years old.” I responded by saying, “That’s marvellous. Do yourealise that if either of us had been American, we should have said ‘Gee, it’s well over 250 years old’”. Incourse of that short exchange we established, I like to think, a shared mutual respect between our two nations,since each of us had displayed a certain common sense of history. We were both fully equipped by ourexperience to tackle our task seriously.

Later I was able to conjure up a series of images, which I like to think made some impression on the Chinesenegotiators. In my opening talk with Wu, for example, I likened Hong Kong to a Ming Vase—an object ofpriceless value, which we were engaged in handing over just like the baton in a relay race. At a later stage,Deng was arguing that investment into Hong Kong would continue, since the American and JapaneseGovernments had assured him of that. “So there’s no need to bother about all the other less importantcountries—Indians and people like that”, he said. I took the opportunity to correct him. “Capital would onlycome in,” I said, “if Hong Kong retains its magnetism. And that magnetism to attract capital depends oncontinuing freedom for capital to move away. Nothing said by American or Japanese Governments can achievethat. That depends entirely on what actually happens in Hong Kong”.

I am still not sure that that point has got home. But my sequence of illustrations did help, I like to think, tooil the wheels of the negotiations. And another key part was played by the Chinese interpreter, Madam JaneZhang Youyon. The role of the interpreter is often underestimated. Never, for one moment, was Madame Zhangdisloyal to the position of her own national government. Always she was a Chinese spokesperson. But equallyalways she was looking for the word that might help to take both sides through the difficult passages. In theresult, one of the things in which I take most pleasure from in this part of my life is the fact that when, yearslater, Madame Zhang came to apply for a job with the International Labour Organisation, she asked me toprovide her with a reference. It must, I think, be relatively unusual for a diplomat from the Peoples’ Republicof China to be going around the world with a reference from the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. Iam glad to say that she got the job. But that is enough egocentricity.

Diplomatic skill cannot overcome reality. The central fact of Hong Kong’s future is that Britain’s lease on92% of the territory—even if you accept, which the Chinese do not, the legitimacy of the “unequal treaty”which created the lease—runs out in 469 days. No kind of diplomatic skill in the world will overcome a rootof title as limited in time and space as that.

I remember another insight into this importance of reality in diplomatic relations, from the discussion I hadwith Mikhail Gorbachev in my first solo meeting with him at Hampton Court on 17 December, 1984 (the dayafter he met Margaret Thatcher for the first time). In course of that discussion I quoted from a speech by GeorgeShultz, which he had made in October 1984 presenting the softer side of American diplomacy: “Strength alonewill never achieve a durable peace”. The striking thing was Mikhail Gorbachev’ s instant response, quotingfrom a later speech by George Shultz (made only weeks before our meeting) the sentence: “Diplomacy withoutforce is not enough”. So he immediately presented the other side of that important coin. That is a veryinteresting insight into the skills of Mikhail Gorbachev. He was in no official sense a diplomat, still less aForeign Minister. Nevertheless, he was immediately able to play a crucial diplomatic card in that way.

The whole exchange reminded me of an equally striking phrase, used by Sir Michael Howard, in his 1982lecture about the Foreign Office: “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.” The sameRealpolitik was evident in Gorbachev’s exchange with Margaret Thatcher on the preceding day. We were bothstruck, when he said, “I must remind you of what your own great Foreign Minister Palmerston said: ‘Britainhas no permanent friends and no permanent enemies but only permanent interests’. So too,” he went on, “for



Russia. So let us identify the interests which we both share and on which we can seek to work together for thefuture.” No wonder we thought we could do business with a man of such well equipped insight.

So, in diplomacy strength must, in the last resort, matter more than style. It was, I think, the same MichaelHoward who observed that Palmerston, “arrogant, self-confident, idealistic, and xenophobe ... conducted policywith insolent panache”. He could get away with it, because in those days Britain was the strongest power inworld. Even the milder Lord Salisbury, 40 or 50 years later, when giving his definition of British foreign policyas “floating down stream fending off obstacles with a boat-hook”, was able to cherish the same confidentthought. For, as Lord Carrington later pointed out, in those days the stream was still flowing in the rightdirection and Lord Salisbury had a very strong boat-hook; for, most important of all, Britain still was “top dog”.

You can see the same thought, more crudely expressed, if you go to the main hall at the Old Bailey (whichI hope you don’t have to do!) and see inscribed there the anonymous inscription: “Right lives by law and lawsubsists by power”. It offers a chilling but important insight—which I prefer to qualify, as Colin Powell didwhen he gave his Valedictory Address as Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He quoted, a little surprisinglyperhaps, from Thucydides: “Of all manifestations of power restraint impresses men most”. That reminds meto make the point that some of the other people I have been talking about—the politicians are in a sense theamateurs. Colin Powell, by contrast, is a professional, albeit a professional soldier. I think it is important torecognise the extent to which, in the field of diplomacy as in so many others, professionalism does play akey part.

The United States is actually a rather interesting exception in some respects. For, as you may know, theirtradition is more-often-than-not, to appoint non-professionals to their senior ambassadorships. If one looks atthe names of two recent holders of the Ambassadorship to the Court of St. James, one sees an example of bothbreeds: Ray Seitz was (exceptionally) a professional—a career diplomat—and certainly a first-classAmbassador. And so was the representative of the other breed: Charles Price, his immediate predecessor—anoutstanding example of the American businessman turned diplomat. So it is possible for both types to fill thesejobs very well. I dare to say, however, that, for me at least, the pinstripe professionalism of the United Kingdomis on the whole a little more reassuring than the tendency to appoint ambassadors from a wider range of non-professionals. I hasten to add, by the way, that I haven’t seen a literally pinstriped individual in our diplomaticservice for many years. Pinstripes are out.

But professionalism has long been important. Let me illustrate that with an incident that could have comefrom the script of Yes Minister. When Lord Salisbury was planning a new telegraph line to India and wasexpressing a strong view about what should happen there, one of the diplomats advising him on this topicrather testily exclaimed: “Sir, you have turned your mind to this problem for perhaps an hour. I have beenstudying it for 15 years. Which of us is more likely to be right?” A pretty crushing comeback, you might think,from an impertinent subordinate sitting at the Foreign Secretary’s table.

But it was a necessary response. For there is good reason for professionals to be outspoken, to be as candidas that. For the politician is truly in need of more detached, professional advice. I tried to make this point to SirRichard Scott, when I described for him the scale of a ministerial work load-though I don’t think I succeeded. Igave him the results of a calculation. During my six years as Foreign Secretary, I explained, I processed athome each night probably three boxes fully laden with papers. I kept this up, five or sometimes six nights aweek, for at least 40 weeks a year. So, during six years I had actually processed—during the hours when mostpeople were asleep—no less than 24 tonnes of paper. So it was not surprising, I explained to Sir Richard, thatI did occasionally need additional help in recalling what I had said or done in balancing the arguments in anygiven case.

Lord Grey conveyed the same impression. His work load, he said, was: “Like the Greek furies; it pursuesone inescapably and one may not rest or read”. George Shultz put it even more dramatically: being Secretaryof State, he said, was like “trying to get a drink out of a fire hose”.

So the Secretary of State does need professional guidance; and he or she is entitled to expect professionalcandour. It follows that the practise of diplomacy requires from the professionals courage as well as candour.I recollect vividly the closing paragraph of Sir Percy Cradock’s valedictory dispatch from Beijing in which herecords (as most retiring Ambassadors do at that point), “my one regret about the service which I enjoyed somuch.” Sir Percy deplored what he called the decline of professionalism—by which he meant the increasedreluctance of professional diplomats to be as outspoken to their political “masters” as they ought to be. I toothink that is important although just how far one should carry such candour in public even after retirement, isa slightly different question.

Two closing thoughts if I may: the first is on the relationship between government and people, particularlyin the field of diplomacy. Of course, you need popular support and understanding for your policies. Of course,you have to explain or discuss them publicly. But there must often be a limit to the degree of publicity that ismanageable or necessary in those circumstances. I quoted, in course of a recent House of Lords’ debate, fromKierkegaard. And I think—only half in jest—that the point is still important. He said this:

“Complete publicity makes it absolutely impossible to govern. No one has understood that better than thedaily press, for no power has watched more carefully over the secret of its whole organisation than thedaily press, which continually cries out that the government should be quite public. Quite right, the



intention of the press was to do away with government—and then itself govern, which is why it safeguardsthe secrecy which is necessary in order to be able to—govern!”

That perhaps puts the case a little strongly. But I think it can be well supported by an exchange (which isnow long-since historic) which demonstrates very clearly the wisdom of non-publication. At the end of theHong Kong negotiations in Beijing in July 1984, there was one deeply worrying question still unresolved.What was the intention of the Government of the Peoples’ Republic of China in relation to the stationing oftroops in Hong Kong when the time came? We were anxious to try and probe this point. I decided to do so, ifI could, at our closing “banquet” in the British Embassy.

Finally the chance came, in a corner of the drawing room with Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian and hisdedicated interpreter, Madame Zhang. So I raised the point. The answer that I received was: “It’s not a questionthat you would be wise to press at this stage; for you are much more likely than not to get the wrong answer.”I reflected for a moment or two—and concluded that it was indeed wise to accept that advice. At that veryearly stage of the transition, when the concept of China regaining physical possession of Hong Kong was stillremote from reality, unwelcome truths would have had a far more startling affect than they did have later,when the facts had become gradually inevitable. I would not hesitate to defend the legitimacy of that example of“secret diplomacy”. It was clearly sensible to test the ground and yet necessary not to disclose the conclusions atthat stage.

The other interesting reflection concerns the importance, in all countries, of the relationships between headof government and foreign minister, especially in a summit-driven age, when heads of government now rocketround the world as much as only foreign ministers used to do—sometimes indeed more. It is no secret thatthis relationship is probably the most difficult of all. Relations between the White House and State Departmentover Irangate, for example; or on a more contemporary question, about the quality of Mr. Gerry Adams’ virtuesas an international figure and as to whether or not he should be granted a visa to visit the United States.

Relations between Number Ten and the Foreign Office are quite often equally tense. Sir Nicholas Hendersonin his book, Private Office, offers a perceptive insight:

“I always noted the customary ill-humour of Foreign Secretaries when accompanying the PM on visitsabroad, which is nevertheless nothing to their mood if there is any suggestion of their being left behind.”

Macmillan in his book, The Past Masters, has an even more revealing insight into relations between ForeignMinister Anthony Eden and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Macmillan describes how Chamberlain“drove Eden to resignation by acts of disloyalty which are scarcely believable”. For example, as Chamberlainrecords in his own diary:

“I wrote a letter to Mussolini in friendly terms and this was followed by a very cordial reply from him. Idid not show my letter to the Foreign Secretary, for I had the feeling that he would object to it”.

When Eden had resigned and Chamberlain ended up, says Macmillan, “with his Foreign Secretary in theHouse of Lords—nothing wrong with that—the charming, urbane, and essentially pliable Lord Halifax,Chamberlain was able to take effective control of foreign policy”.

So too, Lloyd George (1922) was able in the same way apparently to coerce his Foreign Secretary. Of allpeople, the great Lord Curzon complained that he was expected to be in that capacity no more than “a valetor a drudge”. Many of his Cabinet colleagues shared Lord Lansdowne’s view that there “should be rather more1”0 and rather less PM in the salad”. But as on subsequent occasions that proved to be a vain hope.

So my Conflict of Loyalty was not the first of its kind.

Let me close with a final illustration of two features of modern diplomacy—the importance of timing andthe huge breadth of the agenda with which future diplomats can fascinate themselves. Consider a topic thatwould have been perceived as barely even relevant a hundred years ago—population growth. Imagine a lilywhich doubles in size every week and which by the end of a year will cover the whole pond in which it grows.To get to that point it must take the first 36 weeks to cover only l/8,000th of the pond. At week 50, bydefinition, it covers one-quarter of the pond, by week 51, one-half of the pond. In the last short week, at onejump, it occupies the whole pond.

Further written evidence from the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS)

FCO to End Nearly All Overseas Postings for More Junior Grades

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the biggest union representing Diplomatic Service staff,has in recent months made two submissions to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Both submissions havehighlighted our concerns about the increasing localisation of posts in UK embassies and consulates around theworld and the impact this will have for the operation of the FCO and UK Diplomatic Service.

The committee themselves shared some of these concerns. In their report on the performance of the FCO(Foreign Affairs Committee—Third Report on FCO Performance and Finances, 2 February 2011) theycommented that, “A further reduction in the opportunities for more junior UK based staff to serve in overseas



posts, and a consequent diminishing of experience and morale among FCO employees, will over time have adamaging effect on the quality of British diplomacy and the effectiveness of the FCO.40

While the date has now passed for submissions for the committee’s current enquiry into the role of the FCOin UK Government, there has been a recent major development related to the deployment of Diplomatic Servicestaff overseas that PCS would like to make the committee aware of.

On 23 February the FCO announced a decision made by the Executive Board to end nearly all overseaspostings for A & B band officers in the Diplomatic Service and wider FCO. A & B band are the most juniorgrades within the Diplomatic Service and FCO. There are currently around 450 of these posts and the plan isto reduce this number to around 50 “essential” posts by 2015. The FCO say this is being done for two reasons:to make savings as a result of the recent government spending review, it was claimed this measure will saveup to £30 million a year by 2015 which will be recycled into “frontline” diplomatic work; a diminishingrequirement for this type of work to be carried out overseas by UK based officers.

The FCO announced there would then be a 60 day consultation period with staff and trade unions to discussthese proposals. However they made it clear they have already made the decision to end nearly all overseaspostings for more junior staff and the consultation period was to discuss how they could implement thisdecision.

PCS is extremely concerned about this decision apparently made by the FCO Board and the impact it willhave for FCO staff, FCO operations overseas, UK diplomatic capability and also the ability of HMG to assistUK nationals overseas.

Our first concern is that this decision, with far reaching consequences for the FCO and Diplomatic Service,has apparently been taken with no consultation with Heads of Mission, FCO staff, its unions, other governmentdepartments, SIS and other stakeholders and interested parties. The decision has also been taken without anyactual business case being put forward to support it nor any cost benefit analysis. PCS has seen the papers onwhich the Board made their decision and these contain only assumptions about the likely impact of the decisionwith no actual hard data or evidence to support these assumptions.

The FCO have said that they will now go through the 450 A & B band posts overseas to see which can belocalised, reconfigured, replaced or upgraded to leave them with 50 “essential posts” which largely for securityreasons will need to remain. PCS believes this work should have been done before any decision was made toget rid of nearly all these posts. This appears to be a case of post-hoc rationalisation.

The FCO has tried to characterise the jobs as back office functions. This is simply not the case. Althoughthe jobs are more junior within the FCO’s grading structure they are still jobs which are key to FCO workoverseas. Many B band jobs are political officer jobs which involve lobbying host governments on behalf ofHMG, reporting political developments and promoting human rights. Other jobs at B band are involved inpromoting trade and inward investment, one of the FCO’s new priorities and also consular work, includingacting as the front of house contact point in UK embassies overseas. A lot of A band jobs are in the Registryand other IT and communications roles, all of which are essential for embassies and consulates to maintaincontact with the FCO in London.

The FCO claim the jobs that will go will either be localised, reconfigured upgraded or replaced. PCS believesthat getting rid of this many posts (the 400 jobs slated to disappear over the next four years represents nearlya third of all UK Diplomatic Service posts overseas) will inevitably seriously damage FCO operations overseasand UK diplomatic capability.

Localising posts does not provide any improvement in service delivery. The FCO recently published aninterim report into the impact of their recent programme of localising management officer posts. It found therewas no discernible improvement to service delivery and also that for security reasons many of the taskspreviously performed by UK based officers was now drifting upwards to more senior diplomatic colleagues.In some posts they have also had recruitment and retention problems with new locally engaged staff.

For many of the roles which the FCO now wish to cut locally engaged staff would simply not be as effectiveas experienced, committed members of the Diplomatic Service. It should be remembered that DiplomaticService staff have a 24/7 work obligation overseas while locally engaged staff only have to work local officehours. All Diplomatic Service staff are UK taxpayers and voters. As we have seen recently with variousoverseas crises, the 24/7 obligation is a key part of FCO operations overseas and this capability will be severelydiluted if even more localisation takes place.

The FCO have set up a working differently group to look at how the A & B jobs can be deleted withoutthis work simply not being done or drifting up to more senior diplomats. Once again PCS believes that detailedwork of this sort should have been completed before a decision was made to get rid of 400 overseas posts. Weare sceptical as to whether this work can be reconfigured or replaced. However the danger is having made thisdecision the FCO will now simply try and engineer a solution which doesn’t actually address the problem.

One of the main consequences of this decision is the negative impact it will have on the morale of FCOstaff, an issue already identified by the committee. Staff joined the Diplomatic Service precisely because they40 Foreign Affairs Committee, Third Report of Session 2010–11, FCO Performance and Finances, HC 572, paras 46 & 47



could expect to spend a major portion of their careers working overseas. The FCO will now find it increasinglydifficult to motivate staff in more junior grades who will now spend their entire career in the UK, unless theyare able to get promoted to a higher grade.

It also sends out a very negative message about the work carried out by staff at more junior grades, asthough it is somehow not important to the office. It will also set up a very dangerous divide within the officebetween the more senior grades who work overseas and the more junior grades who won’t. The FCO verymuch relies on an esprits de corts amongst staff. This has been clearly in evidence during the various recentcrises around the world where staff have volunteered to work in the 24/7 crisis centre in the UK and to go toNorth Africa as part of Rapid Deployment Teams (RDT). This readiness to help and volunteer will we believediminish if large sections of the FCO feel that they are in some way not part of the main work carried out bythe office.

The ability of the FCO to respond to a crisis will also diminish over time if large parts of the office have noexperience of working overseas. RDT rely on staff having experience of working overseas to be able to gooverseas at short notice and to be able to get to work immediately on the ground. Staff without experience ofoverseas work will be far less effective than those who do. This could seriously undermine the ability of theUK to help UK nationals overseas in times of crisis.

Jobs performed overseas at A & B bands, also act as very effective training grades for more senior posts. Ifthese posts go the first posting for UK diplomats will often be at Deputy Head of Mission level. It will be verydifficult for a diplomat with no previous experience of working in an embassy or consulate to go out and beeffective in this sort of role.

The final major impact of this decision, will we believe be on diversity within the FCO as an organisation.At the moment ethnic minority staff within the FCO are disproportionately represented within the A & Bgrades. If these grades are denied the opportunity to work overseas then Diplomatic Services staff overseaswill become far less diverse.

We believe that the long term plan of the Foreign Office is to make the entry point for the DiplomaticService at C4 level. The main new entrants at this level are from the civil service fast stream, with adisproportionate number from Oxbridge. More junior grades will not be allowed to join the Diplomatic Service.This risks turning the Diplomatic Service back into an elitist organisation with entrants drawn from a narrowsocial background. Over the last 20 years the Diplomatic Service has been able to attract candidates from awide variety of different social backgrounds and this has been a great strength of the service. We fear this willbe lost if the FCO go ahead with plans to stop posting more junior staff overseas and eventually prevent morejunior staff from being members of the Diplomatic Service.

PCS is well aware of the current financial restraints which the FCO has to operate under, however the £30million annual savings the FCO say not posting junior staff overseas will save could we believe be achievedby looking at other areas of running costs. The single biggest area of expenditure is estates and some fairlyminor reconfiguration of estates could yield similar savings. Significant savings from IT projects could alsobe realised.

PCS is currently urging the FCO to reconsider its decision as we believe it is fundamentally the wrongdecision to end posting more junior staff overseas. If they do want to look at this subject, then we havesuggested running an independent review to look into how the FCO deploys its staff overseas.

We hope the committee will find this submission useful and that you may wish to question the FCO closelyon their proposals. I would also be more than happy to provide any more information required by the committeeor even to come and speak to members of the committee myself.

21 March 2011



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