Foreign Policy

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I do not often venture into the field of foreign affairs, and when I put my name down to speak in this debate I was not aware that it would coincide with a speech by the Foreign Secretary which, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, I have not had the opportunity to read, but which I heard reported on the radio this morning and found very encouraging. Anyway, the debate does coincide with that speech. I do not suppose that the noble and learned Lord knew that it was going to happen but I congratulate him on his timing and on providing the opportunity for this debate.

I want to make two suggestions which, in the light of the reports of Mr Hague’s speech, I do with more confidence than I would otherwise have done. It has been a great sadness to me as I have travelled in recent years to see the hollowing out of our Diplomatic Service and the cultural activities which have been such an important source of British influence overseas for so long.

When I was Cabinet Secretary, there was a proposal—it may well be that the noble Lords, Lord Wright and Lord Kerr, were among its architects—to produce a merged programme to embrace all the Government’s public expenditure that supported our overseas interests—defence, aid, diplomacy, cultural relations and intelligence. Its purpose would have been to enable a trade-off between these various types of expenditure to be made more easily—between weapons systems and the other means of promoting Britain’s overseas interests. The cancellation of a single fighter aircraft could have saved an embassy but, for obvious reasons, the Ministry of Defence did not support a proposal of this sort, and neither did the Treasury. Because the proposal was seen to be so self-interested on the part of the Foreign Office, the suggestion foundered. I was not in the Treasury at the time and I do not have to apologise for my part in its foundering.

Now, when I see in how many countries our diplomatic representation has been reduced or eliminated, and see visa activities in friendly countries having to be handled by posts in other countries—with all the inconvenience and alienation which that produces—I think that our methods of making trade-offs between the different forms in which Britain’s overseas interests are promoted need to be looked at again. We need a more rational system for making those trade-offs. I am not saying that that ought to be achieved through a merged public expenditure programme, but the mechanisms of public expenditure control and decision should not be put in the silos in which they have been put in the past.

That is particularly important at this time, because the House is very well aware that difficult choices will have to be made in the period ahead. Defence and foreign relations are not protected programmes, although overseas aid is. The strategic defence review will involve decisions which are difficult enough, but if the consequence of our public expenditure structure is that the review is carried out within the confines solely of the defence budget, and if the Foreign Office vote has to find a further 25 per cent in savings on top of what has already been taken from it—small change in relation to defence expenditure—I fear now that we will do irreparable harm to one of Britain’s greatest sources of overseas influence, which is the respect that is still felt for our diplomatic functions and cultural activities overseas.

The other area in which there is scope for better mechanisms for considering trade-offs is our policy in the European Union. The activity, speed and quick-footedness with which Britain was able to reach decisions and policy positions in European Union councils was widely admired throughout the world and did great credit to the Cabinet Office system and the work of UK representatives overseas. Two distinguished previous holders of those posts are in close proximity to me now. Where I always felt that we fell short compared with some of our partners was making the trade-offs at the most strategic levels. I take, for example, the French, and the House will know what I have in mind. Our policy positions were conducted too much on the basis of silos—of particular areas. We were not as good as particularly the French when considering Britain’s interests in the European Union in a synoptic way—by looking at what our most important objectives were, what we could concede and where we could use leverage to achieve the ends which were most important to us.

When I was Cabinet Secretary, we produced a committee of Permanent Secretaries who for a time looked at this issue and tried to give the Government some sense of priorities. That was during the time of the previous Conservative Government when there was insufficient unity at Cabinet level for colleagues to be particularly disposed to make trade-offs between each other. However, our system has lacked an ability to make trade-offs at a strategic level. Now that we have a national security adviser, I hope that we might have a national European adviser and that official machinery can be put in place, including a ministerial machinery, to make those trade-offs better.

As I have said, when I thought of making these suggestions I did not have very much hope that they would be very well or easily received by the Government. In the light of the reports on the Foreign Secretary’s speech today, I am more optimistic.