The FCO and the Spending Review 2015

Debate between Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and John Baron

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). He made a very detailed, perceptive and interesting speech, which l thoroughly enjoyed.

The cut in funding for the Foreign Office, on top of the 10% budget cut since 2010, is directly contrary to the United Kingdom’s key strategic interests, and might prevent the Department from effectively addressing serious organisational issues of its own. We cannot properly address the threats to our security from Daesh solely by dropping bombs in Syria, Libya or Iraq, and threats to our economy from events in China and in the eurozone cannot simply be washed away by the Treasury. We need to equip the FCO not just to meet the challenges of today, but to rise to the unknown challenges of tomorrow. There must be a renewed focus on aid and diplomacy in all that it does.

A recent Foreign Affairs Committee report, “The FCO and the 2015 Spending Review, stated:

“In an increasingly unstable world, the Government relies on the FCO to have the necessary infrastructure in place so that it can make critical decisions at a moment’s notice. Over the last Parliament the country was found to be lacking in expertise, analytical capability and language skills to manage the fallout from the Arab Spring and the crisis in Ukraine. In 2010 it might have been thought that expertise on Benghazi, Donetsk, or Raqqa was surplus to requirement. These have become vital areas for our national security, evidencing the real dangers of an under-funded Foreign and Commonwealth Office”.

[Mr Baron]

The hon. Lady is making some excellent points, and I would love to remain in the Chamber to listen to the rest of her speech. I promise that I will pursue it in Hansard afterwards. However, my Whips have very thoughtfully put me on to a Statutory Instrument Committee, so would she forgive me if I left her at this point?

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he has said. On this occasion, I shall forgive him.

The FCO must have the capacity to be able to extend further than the issues with which it currently deals from day to day. In a speech to the Institute for Government last year, the outgoing permanent under-secretary at the FCO, Sir Simon Fraser, supported the protection of UK aid spending and the 2% commitment to defence spending, but lamented the fact that the FCO’s relatively small budget would be unprotected in the coming spending review. He described the FCO as

“the glue that holds everything together”.

He said that the FCO’s budget arguably deserved protection similar to that given to the larger budgets of the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, whose operations overseas would only stand to benefit from a strong FCO. That being said, the FCO clearly needs to reform its overseas network to stem spiralling costs, particularly in the current climate, when cuts are hitting so many people so hard. At such times, the focus must be on efficiency and efficacy.

I hope that, when the Minister winds up the debate, he will be kind enough to answer the following questions. What changes will be made to the implementation of Government policy outside the United Kingdom when it spans a range of Departments? Who decides which Department is best placed to co-ordinate joint action between Departments, and how will funding to support that be secured? Will the cuts mean a diminution of the role of the FCO within the Government, and what impact will they have on its continued strategic role in that capacity? Is it not worrying that the United Kingdom’s international role will become further stratified and unbalanced, as Departments such as the MOD and DFID, which have protected budgets, will have a stronger role without the balancing mechanism that the FCO can bring to that work?

Sir Simon Fraser acknowledged that the issue of human rights was no longer a top priority, and it needs to be re-established as such.

Let me now say something about what the FCO looks like to the outside world. In the same speech, Sir Simon conceded that, in the past, the FCO’s culture had been

“too narrow, too white and too male”,

He argued that that culture had been improved on his watch, but acknowledged that there was still much more to be done to achieve more diversity, in the full sense of the word. Cuts in the Department may threaten progress in the vital area of equality and diversity. There were no women on the shortlist to replace Fraser as permanent under-secretary. He also noted that the FCO had yet to appoint a woman ambassador to its most prestigious posts, such as those in Washington and Paris, although he emphasised that women were now ambassadors in both Beijing and Kabul. He ascribed that to the “pipeline” of diversity in the organisation, pointing out that the FCO had started behind the rest of Whitehall, having been the last Department to abolish its marriage bar, as late as 1973. Fraser anticipated that there would be some competitive female candidates to replace his successor, both from within the FCO and from outside.

On the subject of wider diversity, although 12% of its total workforce is from a minority ethnic background, the FCO leadership at senior levels is almost exclusively white. Fraser said that there had been a cultural switch to understanding that diversity not only mattered but was good for the FCO, leading to better decisions and outcomes. That applies also to the wider workplace, wherever it might be, and indeed to this House itself.

So what impact will these proposed changes to the Department’s budget have on the work of the FCO to address this culture? What schemes and initiatives within the Department will be funded in the next year specifically to address these issues? An isolationist agenda in our international relations has already damaged the UK’s image. At the very least, let us make sure that this is not reflected in this country’s workforce diversity. This should be, and is indeed, our strength.