Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Written Evidence


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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