Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
TUESDAY 16 MAY 2000
SIR JOHN
KERR, KCMG, DR
PETER COLLECOTT,
MRS DENISE
HOLT AND
MR DAVID
REDDAWAY
Mr Mackinlay
100. The issue I wanted to ask about has both
a personnel dimension but also a policy dimension. On page 113
there is great reference to the expansion of staff in the commercial
section in Budapest, Prague, the political section in the Baltic
States, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and additional staff in
Bratislava and Zagreb. I have looked in this report and there
is no mention of Belarus and the Ukraine (although it may be in
the small print). Although geographically alongside, for different
reasons I am concerned. Belarus, it seems to me, apart from the
Kosovo Balkans area is the single biggest dicey issue for us in
our backyard and I am concerned about resources there. I think
it is a relatively small mission and the Ukraine, frankly, is
caught between the rock and a hard place and in other inquiries,
other discussions we have had with Ministers, with yourselves,
I think we have concluded that it could go either way. One cannot
help feel increasingly that the Ukraine is being forgotten about.
So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about staffing resources
there, and what increase there has been, if any. That is staffing
but also the policy side of it.
(Sir John Kerr) I distinguish slightly between the
two countries.
101. Yes, geographically alongside, but different
issues.
(Sir John Kerr) And I do not think there would be
sufficient of a case for reinforcement of Belarus at the moment.
The little Embassy we have there is a very lonely place, with
very little contact with the government. You will remember that
all EU Member States and the Americans withdrew their Embassies
for a period. We are back and most are back but it is still not
a place where it is possible to do very much. I draw a sharp contrast
between Belarus and the Ukraine. We have got a first-class Embassy
in the Ukraine. Ambassador Smith, who the Committee will remember
as our Security Policy Director, is one of our very best, a very
good Russian speaker who is now a good Ukrainian speaker, with
a wife who is also a good Russian speaker and I am sure now a
good Ukrainian speaker. It is rather a high-powered Embassy with
an excellent British Council operation in shared premises with
the Germans, the Göethe Foundation on the university site,
excellent. I have been to have a look at the operation in the
Ukraine. I cannot tell you, I do not have the number in my head,
how big the Embassy is compared to what it was a number of years
ago, but I am happy to look at that.
Chairman
102. Will you write to us?
(Sir John Kerr) It is a very good Embassy. As for
Belarus, I hope the moment comes, but it is not now.
Mr Mackinlay: I am satisfied.
Ms Abbott
103. I wanted to come back on the question of
staffing and recruitment and the question of ethnic minorities.
Your colleague Denise Holt said the FCO was helpless in the hands
of history and that is why the numbers were so low. I notice looking
at your Table 22 that in 1998 you did manage to recruit three
ethnic minorities, and then in 1999 it dropped down to zero. That
1998 figure look suspiciously to me like, "Oh my God, it's
a Labour Government, let's get some blacks in." Then when
you realised it was not quite as radical as that, you relaxed
and went back to the status quo. I do not wish to be disrespectful,
Sir John.
(Sir John Kerr) But you must be factually accurate.
104. Of course I am factually accurate!
(Ms Holt) I would say that the figure for 1998 is
the beginning of the trend we hope you will continue to see, and
1999 was a blip. The PUS has explained that we had in fact got
one candidate who we were very keen to offer a place to but he
took an offer with another department and we were unable to force
him to take our offer. I think this all reflects the work we have
been putting in on bridges to the future and our diversity agenda
which reflects a lot of help we have had from our diversity adviser
where we understood the work we had to put in in getting out and
making our message heard.
105. I did see the nice smilely picture of Linbert
Spencer. There is a more substantive point, which follows on from
what my colleague Dr Starkey said. You said rather sanguinely
we have all these people in the feeder grades who over time will
rise up the ladder. There is no evidence to suggest that is inevitably
the case. If you look at other home Civil Service departments,
there are much larger numbers of ethnic minorities in what my
day were called clerical grades and suddenly they drop off when
you get to more senior grades. If you want more information on
that I suggest you talk to my colleague Keith Vaz who did a lot
of work getting figures out of the government departments to demonstrate
that although many of them had quite large ethnic minorities at
the clerical level, somehow they were not moving up the ladder.
I would suggest that the PR things, the consultancy fees you are
pushing out are well and good, but you need to be very careful
about structural things, your system appraisal, the criteria appraisal,
the transparency of your appraisal system, and what my colleague
was talking about in terms of bringing in people at a slightly
higher level, there is nothing more depressing, I can tell you,
than being one of the first wave of ethnic minorities through
a system, be it Parliament or the Home Office, and you look above
you and there is nobody that looks like you and it would do a
lot to change the atmosphere if people coming in from Bradford
or Brixton or wherever could also look up the ladder and see the
possibility that somebody like them could be up there before them.
(Sir John Kerr) I totally agree, Ms Abbott. Of course
it does help to have Keith Vaz and Patricia Scotland as members
of this whole team, both of them very engaged on just this question,
which is very helpful. I pay tribute to what Linbert Spencer has
done for us and I think "Bridges into the Future" is
a very good strategy. He did look very hard to see if there was
any bias built into our appraisal system. He did not find it,
but, nevertheless, we are supplementing the appraisal system by
the ADC system, which, in my view, is the biggest single advance
in the personnel system, and will, over time, take out the possibility
of bias of any kind.
Chairman
106. On that point, Sir John, when last you
came before the Committee, I think it was my colleague Mr Rowlands
who asked you about the problems of retention of staff when spouses,
male or female, are unable to travel with them. What consideration
has been given to meeting that problem?
(Ms Holt) The biggest thing that I think is designed
to meet that problem, although it does not actually follow exactly
the terms you have put it in, is that we are engaged in a big
project with Relate and involving the Diplomatic Service Families
Association to discover what are the particular factors that might
affect marital breakdown or stress on marriages in the Foreign
& Commonwealth Office and whether the mobile life is a contributory
factor, so that is putting it in its broader social context and
looking at the particular effects in the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office, but you were pointing particularly to the problems of
mobility.
107. Well, I have a little experience a long
time ago when women were considered as social appendages at the
time and were not encouraged to have jobs abroad and now of course
with the very proper professionalism of women who have their own
careers, clearly this must be a major impediment for those who
wish to continue a career travelling perhaps two-thirds of their
life overseas. How do you meet that?
(Ms Holt) I do not know that it is a major impediment.
It is certainly something that we have to discuss very carefully
with staff who are looking at overseas postings and I think it
makes us work harder in the Personnel Command to try and give
them accurate information on the options available. It also means
that we require posts to give us much more information on opportunities
for spouses locally, but it is not frequently a real impediment
to postings.
Dr Godman
108. I have a question on staffing, a different
kind of question, Sir John. On page 64, reference is made to Lockerbie
and the Lockerbie trial and on page 114 there is a photograph
of locally-engaged members of staff raising the flag. The Ambassador
has been in Tripoli now, I think, for some five months.
(Sir John Kerr) Yes.
109. The British Council has been re-established
as well, I take it.
(Sir John Kerr) The British Council will re-establish.
It is not there yet, but it has decided to go.
110. When?
(Sir John Kerr) Very soon.
111. How many members of staff has the Ambassador
in the Embassy at Tripoli?
(Sir John Kerr) I have just been there. I think the
UK-based complement is six, plus a number of locally-engaged staff,
like the excellent man on the left in the photograph on page 114
who kept guard on the premises throughout all the time we were
not there, a very nice man.
112. We will certainly send the Committee's
thanks to him; I am sure he did a great job. Obviously we cannot
refer to the trial itself because that is sub judice, but
the relations with officials of the Libyan Government, are they
good or cool and just how are they influenced by developments
in Holland?
(Sir John Kerr) Relations are certainly correct and
the Libyan Finance Minister and Foreign Minister both told me
while I was there how pleased they were to see that we had sent
out as Ambassador a first-class Arabist. They had followed our
Ambassador's remarks on local television in Tripoli. I think that
British business is very pleased that we are there because there
undoubtedly are very large commercial opportunities in Tripoli,
not only in the oil sector. But I think the principal reason we
are there is because it is clear that the Libyans have broken
their links to terrorism.
113. You are convinced of that?
(Sir John Kerr) Yes, we are 100 per cent convinced
of that. We are now developing a dialogue with the Libyans about
Africa. It is a puzzle down the years why the two countries have
tended to be on the opposite sides of nearly every dispute in
west or eastern Africa, so there is plenty to discuss. We have
also talked about the need fully to implement UN resolutions if
Libya is to re-establish its relationship with the United States.
Coming back to the precise form of your question, the Libyans
have, in relation to Lockerbie and the trial at The Hague, done
exactly what was asked of them. I think that there has been full
co-operation, and I hope that will continue throughout the trial.
114. So do I. I never wanted that trial to take
place in America at all and I thought that if it could not be
Edinburgh, it had to be in the Netherlands. In relation to your
comments concerning terrorism, I am pleased to hear them because
I have often heard allegations that there were strong links between
certain elements in Libya and the Provisional IRA.
(Sir John Kerr) Can I say, Dr Godman, that there certainly
were strong links, but the intelligence community in Britain and
America is convinced that these links have been broken off for
some time.
115. They have been severed. I am grateful to
you for that, Sir John. The Ambassador and his staff then at the
moment are to some extent concerned with helping British business
to establish links with potential customers in Libya?
(Sir John Kerr) The re-establishment of the relationship
requires, for example, the agreement of the terms on which the
British Council may open. There is a negotiation being conducted
by Ambassador Dalton on a cultural agreement which will enable
the Council to start. There is a discussion about broadcasting
rights which brings us back to the World Service debate of earlier.
There is a lot of commercial opportunity which needs to be pursued.
And we would wish to influence Libyan thinking about areas of
the world where we and they still disagree, so there is a certain
amount of political dialogue to be done. I think it is very healthy
that we are back in dialogue with Tripoli.
116. So what you are saying is that the British
Council will soon be back in business, if I can put it as bluntly
as that, in Tripoli and so too that holds for the BBC's World
Service as well?
(Sir John Kerr) Yes. There is a huge demand for English-language
teaching in Tripoli and I am sure the Council are going to be
overrun when they open. The demand is enormous.
117. Have there been any requests from students
anxious now to take up opportunities to study at universities
in the United Kingdom?
(Sir John Kerr) Yes, there are a large number of Libyan
students here already and the demand is very high. Of course to
get a visa they have had to go through Malta because we did not
have a visa issuing office. That is another reason why it is right
that we are back in Tripoli, able to do that in the interests
of the higher education industry here.
118. So this six months, you can issue a satisfactory
progress report for your staff in Tripoli?
(Sir John Kerr) I was there three weeks ago and I
was very impressed.
Mr Mackinlay
119. I looked in this Report for any mention
of our security services. The MI6, I understand, is deemed to
be part of the Foreign Office. I realise the relationship is blurred.
I wondered as this is a report to Parliament whether or not there
could or should be reference to this.
(Sir John Kerr) I do not recognise a blur, Mr Mackinlay,
I recognise only a clear division between the money that we are
accounting for here, say in Table 2 or Table 3, and the Single
Intelligence Vote which is a completely different sum of money
accounted for in a completely different way. So what I am giving
evidence on is the use of the Diplomatic Vote by the Foreign Office,
the Council, the World Service and we should not forget BTI. I
am not responsible for the Intelligence Vote.
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