Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Funding

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I should like to speak in support of the points made so eloquently and powerfully by my noble friend Lord Luce in his opening speech. I await with anticipation the contribution of my noble friend Lord Kerr, who ran the service for five years and who should certainly be listened to.

For my part, I should like to offer a view from the coalface at which I strove for some 35 years, including in Saudi Arabia. It is self-evident that the effectiveness of the Diplomatic Service depends on the quality and experience of our staff in the overseas posts. I was, therefore, shocked to discover that, in nearly half of them, there are two or fewer UK-based staff. I take nothing away from the value of local staff—they make a great contribution to many parts of our work—but the key task of interpreting a foreign society to our own society relies on capable and experienced staff, as the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, has just pointed out. Much of that art is learned from your superiors. In two-man posts, you are not going to learn very much; you are not even going to be there together for very long.

To be effective in any post requires a steady building of trust at senior levels in the other Government. This, in turn, requires that our representatives know the language, culture, history and the way that people think in those countries. This is absolutely vital. We have to earn our laurels, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, pointed out. We have to be good but, sadly, this expertise has been hollowed out. It is almost beyond belief that about a quarter of the jobs in the Middle East that should have Arabic speakers do not have them. The cost of the lack of that expertise is and can be immense. It is surely apparent that the Government’s performance in recent years in Iraq, Libya and Syria has revealed at every stage an inadequate knowledge of the vertical, social realities of these countries.

The same remarks about expertise apply in London also. My noble friend Lord Luce quoted the Foreign Secretary as referring to,

“a sufficient density of policy-making capacity”.

Well, well, well. I think what that means is people who actually know what they are talking about. This is rather important because, if officials are going to stand up to Ministers, it is not good enough that they have simply read the same telegrams. They will not be taken any notice of. They have to speak from a real experience of the region; a real knowledge of the leaders of the countries we are talking about; how they think; what their priorities are, and what the pressures on them are. They need a long experience, the longer the better, especially in stable countries—if there are any left—in such countries that have had a stable Government for some time.

Regrettably, it has now become quite clear that the Diplomatic Service is stretched far too thinly. Its capability to promote and defend our national interest is declining and this is a decline which the Government must bring urgently to a halt.