Letter to the Clerk of the Committee from
the Head of Parliamentary Relations and Devolution, FCO, dated
4 September 2006
FCO TOP RISKS
REGISTER
Dear Steve,
1. Thank you for your letter of 25 July.
2. I enclose a copy classified Confidential
of the Jack Review.
3. On the Top Risks Register (TRR), you
asked why Iraq and the Middle East were not among the five "Strategic
Risks" identified in the July version.
4. Both are extremely high policy priorities
for the FCO. The Middle East has become even more acute since
the document was produced. The FCO already devotes significant
resources to each, and is actively engaged in managing the risks
associated with them.
5. Both issues have figured in previous,
longer, versions of the TRR. But the Board has recently asked
that the TRR be cut down to a few Risks focusing on those which,
if they occurred, would have corporate implications for the FCO
(eg requiring decisions on shifting resources to deal with them).
The aim was to use the TRR to encourage proactive thinking in
the FCO about the range of possible risks, both on the policy
and corporate sides, to the organisation achieving its objectives.
6. Reducing the "strategic" (or
policy) risks to five obviously involved judgments about what
to include. Many policy risks could have been included, certainly
both Iraq and Middle East. But since they were already the subject
of intense policy focus, and considerable FCO resources they were
left out of the Top Risk Register in order to make room for other
types of risks, such as an energy or major humanitarian crisis.
7. The Board will keep the TRR under regular
review, and will look specifically at the coverage of Strategic
Risks, at their next quarterly review in the autumn.
Yours sincerely,
Chris Stanton
Parliamentary Relations and Devolution Team
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
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