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Foreign and Commonwealth Office

My Lords, following that doom-laden piece of advice from the Front Bench, I begin by extending my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for having introduced this debate. I agree with every word that he said—indeed, I agree with every word spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, as well. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has been applying himself to this topic with tenacity, with speeches in Chatham House and articles in various publications. I played a modest part in a debate just over two years ago, on 8 December, and stand by everything I said then. One encouraging thing is the continuity of the campaign that the noble Lord has been running. It is getting increasing support and is increasingly important. One other moderately encouraging thing is that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office can be described as one of the great offices of state. We are living in a world where great offices of state are being knocked down like skittles in a bowling alley. The Treasury would just about acknowledge that the Foreign Office is a great office alongside it. The Treasury has an undue sense of its own importance. But look at what has happened to the other departments, such as the Lord Chancellor’s Department, the Home Office, the short-lived Department for Constitutional Affairs—all knocked around. We have a Lord Chancellor who turns up in all sorts of stray places, in stray uniforms, no longer representing a great department of state. The Department of Trade and Industry now has an abbreviation that the noble Lord cannot remember, and nor can I. The Department of Education is now Children, Schools and—not nannies, but Families. I dread to think what is coming. We have stopped short of the time when Edward Heath was described as ““SOSFITARDAPOTBOT””—Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development, President of the Board of Trade. That is a serious point. The Foreign Office is a crucially important department and needs to be recognised as such. There has been one other change, which is not so important but is really rather curious. It is the scale of the huge document that is now produced as the annual report of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which is matched by an even larger volume from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the other place. In my day, no such documents existed. That does not mean that it was necessarily right, but they must take up a huge amount of energy and intellect. We got by with the occasional compact White Paper, with considerable help from the Foreign Affairs Committee, with the noble Lord playing his part in that in those days. That aspect at least is still there. The relationship between the Foreign Office and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the other place, as demonstrated from the reports that I have looked at this year, is of enormous importance. They understand each other, just as they did in my time, on strange issues ranging from diplomatic immunity to Grenada. It is of great importance that that recognition is there. In paragraph 63 of its latest report, the Foreign Affairs Committee states: "““We welcome the fact that it was the FCO, rather than DfID or the MoD, that led on developing the new PSA on conflict. ""This sent an important signal that the Government was committed to diplomacy as the best form of conflict prevention””." It went on to say that Sir Ivor Roberts, in giving evidence, pointed out that, "““we need to have a clear understanding of who runs foreign policy, and at the moment the lines are so blurred that it is very difficult to know””." He went on to say, "““whether it is run by a Department called DFID or a Department called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is not the point. The point is that there can only be one British Government foreign policy, and in every capital there can only be one voice that holds sway ... We cannot have—and this happens too often—two voices in the same capital””." The committee concluded quite clearly: "““While we welcome greater joined-up working between the FCO and other Government Departments, we recommend that there should be a clear recognition across Whitehall, including from the Prime Minister’s office, of the FCO's responsibilities for foreign policy””." There is a clear affirmation of a crucial understanding that must be achieved across Whitehall, and not least in the Prime Minister’s office. It is reflected by the arithmetic pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and by what he had to say. It is good to be able to say that there appear in the report of the Foreign Office other major improvements in the management style of the office, which is something on which Sir Peter Ricketts and the new Foreign Secretary are both entitled to be complimented. There is one other point that I thought the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, was going to touch on. He stressed the importance of the Commonwealth. The striking thing is that, in the three or four-page document summary of the Foreign Office book, there is no reference at all to the Commonwealth. If one looks through the large glossy magazine, there are three or four minimal references to the Commonwealth—footnote references—and yet it is still an important part of the title of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It may be a regrettable oversight. Still, even in my day as Chancellor, the Commonwealth was a very important organisation. It briefed me fully on the economic affairs of the world before I went to IMF meetings. It is an enormous asset to us, and to its members, to belong to that organisation. I also endorse absolutely what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said about the importance of India. As for the relationship between the FCO and DfID, as I have said before in this House, the growing disparity in resources allotted to those departments represents a huge error of judgment. It is an error of judgment that does not benefit from the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was in a position, even as Chancellor, to take a much more liberal attitude towards the 0.7 per cent target than I ever did when I was in the Treasury. The trouble is that a 0.7 per cent target—a spending target that has to be achieved—is like a licence to print money. That is the sole framework within which DfID, and the old ODA, has functioned. The DfID allocation in the current year is three and a half times that of the Foreign Office, by contrast with two and a quarter times that figure 10 years ago. It is possible, though I would not go as far as advocating this, for DfID to prosper as the ODA did under the wing of the Foreign Office. Without arguing that case, I am quite certain that the resources have to be reallocated. The Foreign Office is so important because of the growing importance of diplomacy in today’s world. It is not becoming less important, but more so. I know that some colleagues are aware of the initiative that was presented in this House only a week or two ago by George Schultz, the former Secretary of State for the United States, on the nuclear threat initiative, on which all the leading statesmen, ex-Secretaries of State and Secretaries of Defence and chairmen of the foreign affairs committee of the United States are agreed. Against that background, George Schultz gave a speech entitled ““The Age of Diplomacy”” in Oslo last week, in which he said: "““We must consider the immense diplomacy needed to take the steps that have been identified””—" in tackling the nuclear threat— "““Diplomatic leadership from the very top is essential. No doubt foreign ministries will be expected to organise the effort. Quite obviously, that effort must be taken side by side with ministries of defence. I would like to highlight another ingredient … Almost all of the steps involved have a major scientific and technical component … That is a diplomatic undertaking of immense difficulty and importance that can only be accomplished by teams that include scientific capability, private as well as public””." I have one further quotation from George Schultz, from a book which I had the privilege to write the foreword to. It was published here last week and is entitled The World Crisis: The Way Forward After Iraq. He said that, "““we in the United States, and in other countries as well, face a radically changed world with rising powers, ungoverned territories, radical Islamists and immensely powerful weapons spreading around. This situation requires a much larger and invigorated commitment to the tasks of diplomacy, conducted on a global scale. We in the United States could be worse off. Colin Powell, in his time as Secretary, saved the Department of State from a downward slide. He reinvigorated the recruitment process, improved the resource base and technological capability, and raised the spirits of the foreign service. But much more needs to be done. The size of the foreign service needs to match global needs””." Ours need not be that large, but the case for restoring its primacy in the conduct of foreign policy, as spelled out by everyone who has spoken so far, cannot be overstated or repeated too often.