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Strategic Framework (FCO)

I am delighted to have secured this debate and to serve under your chairmanship for what I believe is the first time, Mr. Martlew. I do not intend to do the Minister’s job, but I thought it would be helpful to outline exactly what we are talking about, because I imagine that various documents are called ““Strategic Framework for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office””. I wish to talk about the framework launched by the Foreign Secretary in a written ministerial statement on 23 January. It has since been published on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website and informs its departmental report. I believe that it took effect on 1 April. The written statement is of great interest—it is right that the Foreign Office reviews its overall strategic direction, priorities and so on from time to time. I strongly applaud various aspects of the framework, including counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, climate change and conflict zones such as Afghanistan. To digress slightly, the Foreign Office has done particularly well on counter-terrorism in the past six years—in many ways, it sets global standards. I saw for myself in Kano, Nigeria, some of the helpful work that it does to match British Muslims with Muslims in other countries to exchange best practice on community cohesion and the softer counter-terrorism work. On the set of goals in the strategic framework, I regret that the promotion of democracy has been transferred to the Department for International Development. I think that it more properly belongs with the FCO, but adding goals and objectives to the strategic framework is not the main purpose of my remarks; rather, they are less about what is in the document than what is not, and the resources that the Foreign Office has or does not have to meet the objectives of the framework—the issue is more the Foreign Office’s capacity and infrastructure to deliver the framework. The FCO’s overall budget is projected to be £1.7 billion by 2010-11, which is not an awful lot. It is significant, but compared with the £2.7 billion of extra borrowing announced last week, it is not that great an amount. We can also compare it with the newly-nationalised Northern Rock bank, which has more than £100 billion in assets. Overall, we get good value for money from the £1.7 billion given to the FCO, but it represents a reduction in the budget. The Foreign Affairs Committee calls it"““an average real annual reduction of 0.2 per cent.””" It also says in its annual report published on 19 November 2007 that the amount"““compares poorly to the settlements of other departments””," that it"““risks jeopardising the FCO’s important work””" and that"““if the FCO’s settlement is compared against its expenditure plans for 2007-08 as set out in Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, we calculate the change in budget as an average real reduction to be…5.1 per cent. per annum””." I have some doubts about whether the strategic framework document is deliverable on such a budget. Doubtless the FCO will manage—it always has—but overall Government expenditure is riddled with waste and there is not much on the FCO’s bones to take off, as it were, if we wish to achieve the overall goals. I want shortly to compare our budget with the budgets of some of our European allies, but the contrast with what the United States is doing with its State Department budget is particularly striking. Having perhaps learned from the period 2001-04, the US is beefing up its soft diplomatic power quite considerably. On 26 November 2007, the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates said:"““What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security—diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development””." In 2006, when launching the transformational diplomacy initiative, the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, talked about the need for more diplomats to be sent to trouble hotspots, creating regional public diplomacy centres and small, localised posts outside foreign capitals, and training diplomats in new skills. In the State Department’s budget for the financial year that has just finished, $124.8 million was allocated to transformational diplomacy. That included $40 million for the geographical repositioning of jobs and about $36 million for language training, public diplomacy, technological training and so on. That $125 million was up from $103 million the previous year. Between 2007 and 2008, the United States increased its overall foreign affairs spending by $6 billion. In terms of sheer numbers, therefore, our budget is not only contracting in real terms, but, unfortunately, going in the opposite direction to that of our leading ally and those of some of our European allies. The change in the number of our embassies and consulates over the past 10 years has been particularly stark. Since May 1997, the Government have closed eight embassies, six high commissions and 18 consulates—that is 32 closures in the past 11 years, and two more high commissions will close this year. To be fair, some new outposts have opened in that time, but only 13, most of which have been in new countries, such as Montenegro, where an embassy had obviously become a necessity. Overall, however, there has been a significant decline in the number of Foreign and Commonwealth Office outposts abroad. I find it particularly striking that we have less presence across the world than other European countries of comparable size. In Latin America, for example, we have four fewer outposts than France and two fewer than Germany. Strikingly, we are directly represented in fewer UN countries than France, Germany or Italy. In Africa, Lord Malloch-Brown was challenged over why we had no representation in 23 of the 53 African states. He conceded the point, but rather incongruously said that the Government were"““trying to grow our diplomatic footprint in Africa””." I question how we can do that when the number of outposts is rapidly contracting. On 8 November 2006, Lord Hannay told the Foreign Affairs Committee:"““When I was doing the job…as ambassador to the UN, the world had an inconvenient habit of finding itself in the middle of crises in places where Britain did not have embassies: Kigali in ""Rwanda, Haiti, Somalia and Afghanistan. Your capacity to operate effectively was cut by a large amount by not having an independent, objective flow of information coming in.””" Today, we have no representation on the ground in 50 to 60 states. That includes obvious places such as San Marino and Liechtenstein, where nobody would argue that Britain should be represented. However, it also includes serious trouble spots, such as Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Kyrgyzstan and Somalia. Our diplomatic footprint has therefore been dangerously shrinking, contrary to assurances given in Parliament. The number of diplomats has also been declining, and that decline is projected to increase. As many people know, at various times the Foreign Office has too many people in a particular coterie to fill certain positions, because of its pyramid structure. I believe that currently it has a lot of people in their early, mid and later forties. Given the number of diplomats that the Foreign Office projects it will shed over the coming years, however, the situation will become very dangerous, particularly in the lower ranks. The Foreign Office recently announced that it would cut the number of diplomats from 6,000 to 5,400 in the next five years, but such people are vital to our efforts. On 8 November 2006, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, also a former ambassador to the United Nations, told the Foreign Affairs Committee:"““We are finding that the size of post, the spread of the Foreign Office’s work, the capacity to construct relationships and to negotiate, the experience gained by a slimmer number each year of men and women in important but more junior roles in embassies abroad because numbers have been cut is leading to a progressive decline in the capacity of the Foreign Office to cover every aspect of diplomacy.””" We are, therefore, looking at not only at a reduction in the number of postings, but a significant reduction in the number of those who are posted. Again, that leads me to doubt whether the strategic framework will be realised. I want to discuss the specific issue of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s language school, which is earmarked for closure. I am not sure whether the closure has already taken place or is about to take place, but it seems that it will go ahead. The closure will save only £1.5 million a year as part of what is described as the ““new business model””. The number of diplomats in the FCO who receive language training has been in decline for some time—that is not a new phenomenon. Figures from the Foreign Affairs Committee show that 405 people received language training in 2005-06 and that that fell to 252 in the 2007 financial year. The language school is, however, a crown jewel, which it might be difficult, if not impossible, to recreate in future years. Of course, languages can be learned elsewhere, and no one would deny that there is no point the Foreign Office setting up a whole infrastructure for small and minority languages where that expertise exists, such as in the School of Oriental and African Studies or the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. While I was at university, I attended Czech language classes that were part-funded by the Foreign Office, and I want to use my experience to illustrate the importance and utility of learning minority languages, which have turned out to be rather useful in ways that one could not have predicted 20 years ago. I want to use a practical example and to name one of our diplomats. I have not spoken to him about the debate and I have not had any contact with him since I met him in November. However, he is a good example of somebody who has used language training to augment and improve our diplomatic efforts on the ground. I have in mind our excellent ambassador in Skopje, in Macedonia, Mr. Andrew Key. As part of its work, the European Scrutiny Committee visited Macedonia in November 2007, and the FCO website says that Mr. Key presented his credentials only at the beginning of September 2007. None the less, he was pretty much the only ambassador from one of the major European countries to have put significant effort into learning Macedonian. He was already fluent in Chinese and had taken out two months to learn Macedonian. We had a meeting with the Prime Minister of Macedonia, Mr. Nikola Gruevski, and my knowledge of Czech allowed me to understand enough Macedonian to get the gist of what was going on. It was quite clear from the exchanges with the Prime Minister that Mr. Key could speak Macedonian to an extremely good level. The Prime Minister said to me how important that was, and what a message it sent: although the Prime Minister could speak very good English, and most other people whom our ambassador would come across could speak it in their official capacity, it still conveyed a positive impression and gave our ambassador an edge over some of the other people on the ground. Macedonian is a small language, but Macedonia is an extremely important country at the moment, not least for being next door to Kosovo and being an EU applicant country. It is also a potential trouble spot in its own right. It is important for us that our ambassador can engage fully in his role there. I do not know whether he learned his Macedonian at the Foreign Office language school, and do not want to give that impression if it is not so. I merely use the example to show how important the knowledge of languages—even obscure minority languages—can be for our efforts on the ground. The language school decision will obviously save a little money, but over a longer period it will prove a false economy. Greater savings could be made elsewhere in Government. I want to deal briefly with two or three other matters, starting with the BBC World Service and the economies being driven through in the Russian language service. The eastern European services were closed a year or two ago, which probably made sense. It did not seem to make much sense still to broadcast in Polish and Czech when those countries were pretty much fully integrated members of the EU. However, many of the cuts in the Russian language service are disturbing. The reliance placed on local providers—especially on shortwave networks that have since been closed down by the Russian Government—is a disturbing phenomenon. The second topic I want to mention is Commonwealth scholarships, which are featured in the annual departmental report. I understand that they have been greatly reduced or eliminated. I mentioned earlier that in Nigeria I met two or three people who had such scholarships and that it struck me that the value for money was extremely good. The third issue, which is very important and which I am surprised has led to budget problems, is increased security in several of our consulates and embassies. The Istanbul consulate bombing was in 2002 and I know for a fact that in a number of our embassies and consulates, such as in north Africa and the middle east, it led to a serious and understandable review of security. The embassy in Algiers, for example, is undergoing, or is about to undergo, an expensive reconstruction project. That seems inevitable and right, but I am disturbed to hear that, in a general sense, some of the budget for security improvements and changes that was already agreed has been cut out by the Treasury. An Opposition politician may say that spending should not be cut on this, that or the other, but where could savings be made? The Foreign Office could make significant savings by looking at one of its biggest projects: the FCO website. Everyone recognises the importance of a good, capable website for the FCO, but I doubt whether it will replace highly trained staff on the ground and fixed facilities. The FCO is not like other Departments in the matter of trying to find economies. It strikes me that the money being poured into the development of what must be one of the world’s most expensive websites could be better deployed. In a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O’Brien) on 25 April, the Minister for Europe called the website change an ““upgrade””, with an"““initial cost of £9.7 million””." That is just for one website. Admittedly, it is a portal serving the whole FCO globally, with all our embassies, consulates, high commissions and so on being run out of the same website, but as well as that initial cost of £9.7 million, we were told that"““the project is on target to cost £19.2 million over five years””." We were also told:"““The web is vital for the delivery of the FCO’s Departmental Strategic Objectives.”” —[Official Report, 25 April 2008; Vol. 474, c. 2321W.]" I agree with that, but the amount being poured into the website—almost £20 million, which is far more than has been spent on the language school—is questionable. I am interested to hear the Minister’s defence of spending that enormous sum on one website. I disagree not so much about the Foreign Office’s strategic framework as about how it can be achieved, and about some of the directions being taken by the FCO. I believe strongly that the FCO will need a growing number of experienced and highly trained diplomats on the ground—skilled in languages, technology, commercial and other important skills—in as many key places as resources allow. Ironically, the United States and some of our European allies are showing the way forward in that respect, and we seem to be going in the wrong direction. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points that I have made. It seems to me that we are asking more and more of the FCO and giving it in return fewer and fewer resources to achieve it.