---

UK Worldwide Interests

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon for giving us the opportunity to discuss this vital topic and congratulate him on his opening speech. I congratulate, too, my noble friend Lord Patten of Barnes on his maiden speech which, in accordance with the traditions of your Lordships’ House, was, by his standards, wholly uncontroversial. He and I have shared many adventures in the past, and I hope that we shall share many adventures in this place in years to come. I congratulate him on his personal contribution to our public diplomacy through his books East and West and Not Quite the Diplomat, which I gather are selling in the Asia-Pacific region, if not like hot cakes, certainly like cold tinnies. I, too, bring a particular perspective to this debate, having been Minister of State at the Foreign Office responsible for the Foreign Office budget when my noble friend Lord Hurd was Foreign Secretary, and subsequently having been High Commissioner in Australia, in which context, I turned poacher. There was a certain resonance in the expression ““management guff”” used by my noble friend Lord Patten, but I will not follow him down that route. In recent years, the volume and velocity of diplomatic activity has increased enormously. There are now 15 million British citizens living aboard, and 65 million overseas trips are made by British citizens every year. Demands for travel advice and consular, visa and passport services are constantly increasing. The United Kingdom’s worldwide interests are pursued through ever more direct contacts between heads of government and senior officials. There is ever more interchange with countries across the range of government activities and ever greater volumes of communication. The role of resident diplomats overseas has been enormously enhanced over the years. Diplomacy has become, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, said, a whole of government activity. The communications revolution has broadened our horizons and our opportunities and hugely intensified the pressures on the Diplomatic Service. Although, as a nation, we are usually too modest to make vainglorious claims, as the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond said, the British Diplomatic Service is seen by its peers as the best in the world. Many of its members work today in exceptionally difficult and dangerous circumstances, and it is much too easy to take them for granted. Compared with other government departments, the numbers are small. The Diplomatic Service employs, I believe, fewer people than Harrods. As other noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Garel-Jones, have pointed out, the budget is miniscule. Several years ago, I noticed that the ammunition budget for Bosnia was larger than the Foreign Office running costs budget worldwide. In pursuit of our strategic priorities, the FCO has had to become extremely adaptable in shifting resources. More and more tasks are laid on it, and levels of expectation, particularly of the consular service, continue to rise. The pressure on resources has gone too far. Opening new posts in the former Soviet Union, developments in Afghanistan and Iraq and other activities have stretched the elastic too tight. The FCO’s greatest assets are its people and its network of posts. Yet one in four jobs in the senior management structure is now being cut altogether, eight sovereign and 10 subordinate posts are to be closed in addition to those already closed and a further 11 subordinate posts are to be localised, all to save a mere £6 million. Madagascar, where Rio Tinto is about to make a very substantial investment, is but one example of a seemingly less important country becoming more important in the wake of a post closure decision. Localisation sends a negative signal to the host country. Furthermore, locally engaged staff, however competent, cannot enjoy the same access as that enjoyed by career diplomats. It is also the case that no career structure is open to them, and I have seen able locally engaged people leave almost immediately for more exciting prospects. Localisation is an extremely insidious process. I salute the achievement of the Foreign Office in securing money from the Treasury to enhance the security of our overseas posts following the attack in Istanbul, but I fear that while the Foreign Office should examine its resource allocation with the same rigour as everybody else, a constant state of revolution, of continual salami-slicing, will do great damage to our interests. Devoting more resources to reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, climate change and energy security is clearly desirable, but it should not be at the expense of other priorities. If we are to continue to pursue a global foreign policy that actually achieves real outcomes I believe that the resources devoted to it should be realistic rather than exiguous, and I hope that this debate will contribute to that process and that outcome.