Examination of Witnesses (Questions 23-38)
MR IAIN
ORR
30 JANUARY 2007
Q23 Chairman: Good morning, Mr Orr. It
is a pleasure to see you this morning. I apologise for the delay
to this particular hearing from last week. Could you, too, briefly
introduce yourself and where you think the importance of this
issue lies, particularly with the FCO and the UK Government?
Mr Orr: In introducing myself
and what I have been concerned with, the main point is that I
spent most of my diplomatic career dealing with China. Interestingly,
when I started in China, China was being opened up to the world
through ping-pong diplomacy. I was diagnosed at the age of 50
as being mildly dyslexic. That means that I am very keen not just
to give oral evidence but visual evidence as well. With your permission,
Mr Chairman, I would like to introduce some of things that I have
been involved with through what one might call T-shirt diplomacy.
I am very keen on that.
Q24 Chairman: Could you give us just
one example? If there are other things you have brought, perhaps
they could be circulated later.
Mr Orr: I did want to tell you
that my last overseas post was in Accra where at one point, and
this was a country where we were simultaneously accredited to
Togo, I was involved as an EU election observer in Togo. The relevance
of that to the FCO and the environment is that Togo then was an
extremely ill-governed dictatorship, somewhere where biodiversity
was suffering very badly. It is very much, if you like, the politics
of good governance that, in my view, is the fundamental reason
why the environment and biodiversity within it are important for
good diplomacy. I worked, as I say, for a full career within the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office with a primary interest in China,
but latterly in one of my jobs I had a great deal to do with the
Overseas Territories. I would agree with some of the evidence
already given about the lack of sufficient attention being given
to the Overseas Territories. As for the priority that the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office has given to environmental issues, some
encouragement can certainly be taken from what is said in the
foreword to the Sustainable Development Action Plan 2007,
which the Foreign Office has just printed. There is very good
political guidance given in that in the foreword by Mrs Beckett.
What I am a little more concerned about is the extent to which
the Foreign Office understands how and why biodiversity and other
environmental aspects are crucial to achieving the other goals
of security and prosperity. I think the environment is not as
fully integrated as it should be. I also think that there is a
great deal more that needs to be done in terms of better liaison
with other parts of Whitehall and certainly with civil society,
with NGOs.
Q25 Chairman: How does it filter
down to our overseas posts, particularly with the senior officers
there? Do you think they will be avidly reading the Foreign Secretary's
foreword and revising any local practices, approaches or procedures?
Mr Orr: It is difficult to say.
These documents are meant to be guidance within an organisation
for work. A great deal depends on the leadership. I have heard
some of those giving evidence previously talk of very strong support
on certain issues from ambassadors in post. In some cases that
will be true. There are some very good sentiments within that
document. In terms of delivery, it is important to liberate the
enthusiasm that quite often you get on the ground. The extent
to which people have mentioned getting support from embassies
is quite striking. I think there is a slightly regrettable tendency
for over-management from the centre. It is absolutely vital that
clear political guidance is given, but within these guidelines
it is very often posts that will themselves see opportunities
that arise and make the most of it.
Q26 Chairman: I can see that you
have brought one exhibit which is on the table, quite a large
one. Having made the effort, I guess it would be remiss if the
committee did not see it. Explain it to us.
Mr Orr: Let me explain one or
two of the things that I have brought. I can make certain points
on all of them. This print of penguins is a very easy one. I would
urge you all to go to Falkland House and see a magnificent exhibition
of art from the Falkland Islands. I certainly have a strong belief
that the creative arts and the environment belong very much together.
I do not know if any of you saw the exhibition at the Natural
History Museum last year called Burning Ice: the Art of Climate
Change. It is very important to have that whole creative spirit
involved. I see three crises: climate change; huge global extinction
in terms of biodiversity; and the crisis that is going to impact
most quickly and directly on most people, water. I am particularly
interested in water issues because of my time spent in China.
The water table in Beijing has dropped in the time that I have
been dealing with China something like 30 metres, which is quite
extraordinary. Another of these displays shows something that
I wish was in every embassy and I do not think you have perhaps
heard enough about yet today. It is the trade aspect of your investigation:
it is trade, development and the environment and the FCO. This
magnificent book is the Eco-Design Handbook from Thames
& Hudson. I have nothing to do with Thames & Hudson or
with the author but it is a magnificent guide to good technologies.
There are huge areas of environmental work where we need to integrate
better the work between those who are involved in the political
relationships with other countries and those who are involved
with trade promotion work.
Chairman: I think it must be true that
raising questions of biodiversity might also raise questions of
culture, but that is perhaps a little outside our remit. You have
made an interesting connection.
Q27 David Howarth: What you have
said does come into the questions I am going to ask. There was
a very striking phrase in your written evidence where you said
that the FCO's instinct is to focus on the "traditional muscle-power"
of diplomatic carrots and military sticks in its international
work. The question is: how effective is that approach to advancing
environmental objectives, and what are the other approaches that
could and should be used?
Mr Orr: In the case of many environmental
issues, it is in a sense fairly obvious that people are in it
together. In terms of, say, biodiversity issues, the Convention
on Migratory Species, which I am involved in and doing some consultancy
work for, is trying to bring China on board. One of the concerns
with migratory species, looking at it from a sustainable use development
point of view, is: whose birds are they? I have been at meetings
where Cuba talks about what they are doing with "their turtles",
and the Bahamas says, "Hey, now, they are our turtles, not
your turtles". The same goes for birds and crucially also
for marine species. There are disastrous developments in the world's
oceans. You cannot regard it as yours, so it is not a question
of using your political or military power to defend your territory.
The earth's biodiversity, its climate and indeed its water are
not any one country's territory. There has to be a different approach
to understanding and certainly to working towards much greater
justice in the relationship between countries at different stages
of development.
Q28 David Howarth: I was thinking
of specific techniques. Is this a case where public diplomacy
is very important as opposed to threats and inducements, for example?
Mr Orr: Yes, I certainly think
it is. The United Kingdom has shown itself quite good at that
from time to time. That is very important. This phrase has been
used elsewhere; it is a coalition of the willing and a coalition
not just of countries. There are signs that the Foreign Office
is showing a greater understanding of the importance of working
with businesses and civil society. It is about the culture of
how you approach environmental issues. Much of that, in my view,
has to do with good governance. What concerns me in certain areas,
both in the UK and in a variety of different countries overseas
like China, is that in some of our Overseas Territories the issue
is not to do with cuddly animals but with whether people have
access to the information that they need. I was very disappointed
to find last year that a decision was taken to disapply the Freedom
of Information Act to St Helena and that at a time when there
is major development work going on with the proposed first ever
international airport for St Helena. It is not as easy now for
anybody concerned to get information about that.
Q29 David Howarth: You mentioned
working in business, NGOs and civil society in general. You say
that a start has been made on that. How far down the line has
that reached? There is obviously a great deal of potential there.
How much of that potential has been activated?
Mr Orr: Nothing like enough has
been activated. We have done quite good things. As I remember,
the UK was one country at the World Summit on Sustainable Development
in Johannesburg that really had quite a big role for NGOs within
its delegation. We provided something of a lead on that. That
is all right on the very big occasions. It is difficult to get
that into the working psyche of day-to-day working. Certainly
I had experience when working within the Foreign Office that one
of the important things is not just working with NGOs but working
across government with other government departments. I can remember
being at many meetings where I thought that it was going to be
useful to find out what the views were of a number of NGOs on
an issue while we were taking some policy decisions but where
the attitude quite often was within the FCO, because we have other
departments in the FCO, and with other departments in Whitehall:
yes, it is very important to consult the NGOs but first we have
to get our act together. That is the wrong attitude. There is
no point in consulting people unless you are ready, and this goes
for how you conduct diplomacy with other countries. You are only
going to influence people if you show that you are open to understanding
their interests and being influenced by them. There is a great
deal of expertise within not just the British NGO community but
also the academic community in Britain. An awful lot of that expertise
is not tapped into by the Foreign Office early enough in the process
of policy formation.
Q30 David Howarth: That is the important
point. You also say that the FCO lacks in its Sustainable Development
Strategy strategic vision, which implies that you also think they
ought to get their original lines straight. I was wondering if
you could elaborate on that and say how that could be improved,
especially since your previous answer shows that it is also important
to consult more widely with civil society, the academic community,
NGOs, and so on.
Mr Orr: That is a big question.
That is very difficult to do. It is a bit like telling people
to give up smoking or to go on a diet: the motivation has to come
from within. To some extent, the difficulty is how to get motivation
within the culture of the Foreign Office to understand. I do not
think there is yet a sufficient understanding—it is gradually
developing—of the nexus in the trade development environment.
How do you bring it all together? I have considerable admiration
for the perspective that is set out in the FCO's Sustainable Development
Action Plan, and indeed within that there are some very good sentiments.
One of the earlier witnesses talked about support for lobbying
on whaling issues. That is built into the Sustainable Development
Action Plan. It is much harder to do that if some of the important
posts are not there. This should be dealt with on a regular and
strategic basis so that people realise that it matters to them
if the UK, along with other countries, does not want the moratorium
on commercial whaling to come to an end. They need to have that
at the forefront of their minds. The FCO needs to talk a lot more
to people at very senior levels within NGOs, ministerial and also
permanent under-secretary directors. You only achieve results
with leadership, and that means that the politics have to be decided
at the national level and secretaries of state and ministers should
have that as a priority. That really has to feed into the top
levels and then permeate the culture. It is a tough job.
Q31 David Howarth: You were specifically
critical in your written evidence of the introduction of targets
and objectives into the FCO. You say these can actually hinder
the FCO's work. I suppose the question then arises about how could
sustainable development priorities be better delivered without
targets?
Mr Orr: It is not that anyone
wants to get rid of targets; they do not want to be driven by
them. I think this is related to the tensions between accountability
and trust. Excessive targets mean that you are just not filling
somebody with a vision of what their job is about. You would imagine
that by the time somebody becomes an ambassador or high commissioner,
if they do not know what their job is about and they need it to
be written down as 20 targets to reach by the end of the year,
then you have appointed the wrong person. The people who need
to be given targets are those who are work shy, and I do not people
in the Foreign Office are work shy, or people who need to be kept
going. Sometimes that will apply in business. There will need
to be one or two crucial targets. We have seen evidence of this
in plenty of areas in the National Health Service and elsewhere
where your life and indeed the amount of money you get from the
Treasury is judged by how well you are hitting particular targets.
Often they are interrelated and you cannot hit more than one interrelated
target at the same time. It is like fundamental physics. You have
a range of things that you want to achieve and there have to be
trade-offs as you go along. You have to be guided by a strategic
vision of what you have to achieve. There will be targets or things
to remind you that you are not doing as well as you might be.
As with sustainable development, you do not just stick a label
on it saying, "We achieved that target". You have to
understand why it was a target and make good use of it. One area
that applies to is the project work with which the Foreign Office
is becoming increasingly involved. You will be aware of their
Global Opportunities Fund. My experience of the FCO's work on
projects is that it fills a very important gap. The overseas development
work of DFID is in many ways understandably geared to huge targets
where money needs to be well spent. DFID now finds it very difficult
to spend money that is less than several hundreds of thousands
of pounds, whereas very often, particularly when you come to influence
countries, small amounts of money to support little projects of
£5,000 to £20,000 can be very useful indeed. You do
not want a philosophy of having a great fund and needing to be
able to tick off how it has all been very well spent in accordance
with a set list of priorities. Yes, you need overall guidance,
but you need to be able to respond flexibly when opportunities
arise and you need to trap the value of the projects. Very often
when they have been completed, that may, in the country concerned,
be only the start of the project's value. I have certainly seen
example of embassies and high commissions forgetting and somebody
complaining that the embassy is not doing very much with them,
only to find that the minister may not be aware of a pretty important
project carried out only three years before. I think the FCO has
a real problem keeping alive a good collective memory.
Q32 Mr Caton: Like our previous witnesses,
you have criticised the closure of the embassy in Madagascar.
Does the Foreign and Commonwealth Office need to have a post in
a country in order to have real influence?
Mr Orr: It does if it has sufficiently
important interests there. The point I make about post closures
is important. There is certainly scope for working more closely
with our European partners and more closely sometimes with Commonwealth
partners in certain countries. If you are only visiting there
are always going to be some penalties. The penalty is that very
often the ambassador is simultaneously accredited to four countries
and he will have to organise his life. He will have to make a
plan for when he goes to a country. That is almost certainly going
to be related to the interests of different government departments.
Of course, embassies work for the whole country and they are tasked.
In very many embassies the bulk of the work comes from outside
the FCO; it comes from elsewhere in Whitehall. They will then
target the right time of the year from their point of view to
hit that country. That country becomes used to being visited when
there is something that Britain wants out of them or wants to
tell them to do or persuade them to do, but if they suddenly have
an issue, yes, you can send an e-mail, yes, you can get on the
phone. There may be language and other difficulties. You simply
do not feel that you have the same ability to talk to somebody
who understands your day-to-day background. There is always a
penalty in being non-resident, wherever you are. I was in Ghana.
I would not argue that we ought to have an embassy in Togo but
I accept that there are certain penalties. In the case of Togo,
no, we did not have a sufficiently great interest. The case of
Madagascar was a shocking decision, I would say, and a stupid
one because it was inconsistent with the Government's policy on
development priorities for Africa. It was inconsistent with developing
trade, given that the newly-elected Madagascar Government was
sending out a very strong signal of wanting to move outside the
Francophone world. There were plenty of UK companies and UK interests
but the Foreign Office did not listen to any of them. In that
particular case, the decision was not taken as a result of strategic
thinking. It was a last-minute trade-off. They had to make certain
closures. Somebody fought very strongly not to close the Gambia
as a post, and you could argue about that, but then said that
we cannot trespass on any of our other geographical areas; if
we are going to keep the Gambia, who do we close down? They decided
to close down Madagascar without any consultation with outside
stakeholders. That is not the way to decide whether or not to
close a post. I would say that before any post is closed, or indeed
opened, that decision ought to be based on a serious consideration.
It may take a lot of time. Obviously you know the stakeholders
in that country and in the UK and very quickly, if you were doing
your job at all, you could consult them.
Q33 Mr Caton: Looking more widely,
are you aware of moves to shift to a system of having regional
ambassadors rather than single country ambassadors? If that is
on the cards, can it work?
Mr Orr: I am aware of it slightly.
I have been alerted by reading some of the material sent to this
committee. I am certainly going to look at that. It could work
if you have a regional ambassador with real clout who can deliver
in terms of our interests in particular countries and who has
an effective relationship with those countries. I am pretty certain
that if a government with which we want a good relationship has
found under the present system that because it is not a priority
country within the FCO's current list and it is not one where
we have a sustainable development dialogue and therefore it is
not managing to get the resources that it would like from the
UK and somebody operating regionally could deliver, yes, but I
would be a little sceptical about it. The resources are not necessarily
aid or development resources but also questions of trade and investment
that they would like to see coming from the UK. I would like to
see the case made and tried out. It should be driven by a vision
of how it is going to improve not just as a cost-cutting exercise
but as an exercise in being more effective in influencing countries.
I think there is still a great deal to be said for keeping the
small posts relatively lightly managed from London and working
within very clear guidelines. Relatively young diplomats can gain
experience in small posts managed by three or four other UK-based
staff, if they are lucky, but probably up to 20 local staff, and
coping with really tricky issues like how to handle visa operations.
That can be very good experience for a young diplomat and the
costs of keeping small embassies open are really quite small.
Q34 Mr Caton: In thinking about costs,
the FCO, the same as every other government department, has had
to make staff reductions as efficiency measures. At the same time,
the role of the FCO seems to have spread to cover considerably
more issues. Do you see those twin factors affecting the ability
of the UK to influence the environmental and sustainability agenda
on the international stage?
Mr Orr: I agree that the agenda
is widening and some of that is apparent. We are now much more
aware of the fact that degraded environmental conditions can sometimes
be a factor in causing refugees and conflict. We have terms like
"environmental security" and "climate security".
These are new terms but they relate to something that is not entirely
new. One way in which you can get better results out of the same
or smaller resources is by working more effectively throughout
Whitehall. There is scope for that by understanding other cultures.
I would like to see a good deal more in the way of both inward
and outward secondments in the Foreign Office. You can achieve
better results if you put together the right team to work on something;
it may well be led by Defra or by DFID with an FCO component.
I do not think that is done enough. You can put forward particular
strategic objectives if you have a cross-departmental team that
really gels and operates. I know there is an inter-ministerial
group on biodiversity. If that does better work in giving guidance
to Whitehall as a whole, then you will need possibly to have a
better co-ordinated approach between DFID, Defra and the FCO.
One particular area, which it is important to mention, is the
Foreign Office and its responsibilities in respect of the Overseas
Territories. I have a great deal of sympathy with the view in
the Foreign Office that the Overseas Territories are British.
They are not part of the Foreign Office. They are not like embassies
or high commissions. They are not even countries that we are seeking
to influence in particular. They are part of the British family,
if you like. Undoubtedly, the point that was made in your committee's
review of the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment that Defra
should have a much bigger role is very important. To that extent,
the FCO will much better fulfil its responsibilities in relation
to the Overseas Territories by dealing with good governance and
freedom of access to information. At the moment, in St Helena
there is the problem of the one independent newspaper coming under
a lot of pressure from the government in St Helena, partly because
it sometimes publishes things they do not like. There is huge
value in having a free press.
Q35 Mr Caton: I would like to come
back to the Overseas Territories in a moment. Can I ask you a
broader question first? You identified what you called three crises:
biodiversity, water and climate change. The Government and the
FCO have clearly prioritised the latter, climate change. Are they
right to do that?
Mr Orr: They are certainly right
to prioritise it. It is very important. They should not do it
at the expense of the other crises. At the moment, these three
crises are interrelated. Even if you have the magic technological
solution to climate change, and that still seems to be the Holy
Grail of some people in the United States who say that you will
be able to have a big shield, I find it very hard indeed to imagine
equity between different countries. If you manage to reduce global
temperatures by putting up these great umbrellas of one sort or
another, that is presumably going to affect different countries
to a different extent. How do you compensate those that do better
or worse out of that? The danger lies in saying that climate change
is causing the crisis and that there is no point in spending anything
on biodiversity if you are going to get climate change. All these
crises have all to be tackled. Please do not make climate change
the only priority. You have to look at the environment pretty
holistically.
Q36 Mr Caton: Coming back to the
Overseas Territories, we understand that you were involved in
the original negotiations on the Environment Charters signed with
the UK Overseas Territories. In your view, how successful has
that proved to be in protecting the environment in those places?
Mr Orr: It has been successful
up to a point. It has certainly given those, as much within government
both in the Overseas Territories themselves and in the UK, something
on which to base their requests for resources for priorities.
The Environment Charters followed from the 1999 White Paper. That
solidified some of the values and changes of attitude in that
White Paper. If that had not been there, even the small amount
of funding that is presently available for the environment would
have been lost in cuts or it would have been subsumed in much
larger projects. The delivery is patchy and that is very largely
because a lot of the environmental issues in the Overseas Territories
demand resources. Some governments in the Overseas Territories
are quite well off per capita but, like the Cayman Islands,
may not have all the capacity needed to deal with difficult environmental
issues. The Cayman Islands is an interesting example. You can
argue that they have done very well in recovering from the devastation
of Hurricane Ivan. There are things that we in the UK can learn
from the Caymans about preparing for natural disasters. There
are not enough resources. Policy comes first. There are not necessarily
the right policies. Sustainable tourism is something of a joke
in some places. There can be conflict when a company is developing
a marina; they may be able to take a lot of sand or attack some
mangroves. The development could be made a bit more expensive
if it carries out the necessary mitigation measures. There is
no doubt at all that if HMG is to fulfil its responsibilities
in respect of environmental issues in the Overseas Territories
a real step change is needed to fund the hard choices that need
to be made. If you were given £10 million and asked what
you could do to meet the 2010 biodiversity target by spending
it in metropolitan UK or in the Overseas Territories, you will
get infinitely better value for money out of that £10 million
when you spend it in the Oversees Territories.
Q37 Mr Caton: You mentioned the lack
of capacity in some of the Overseas Territories to deal with environmental
issues. That was certainly confirmed in the previous report we
did that you have already mentioned. What can the FCO and DFID
do to build that capacity?
Mr Orr: It is simple. There is
relevant expertise in a host of institutions but it is not in
the FCO. The FCO does not need biodiversity experts or climate
change experts; it needs people who understand the science and
the politics of this. For a time in the FCO I was the FCO's lay
expert on peaceful nuclear explosions. I had to understand a fair
amount about the physics but that was as a layman and not as an
expert. I had to understand it from a political point of view.
A lot of expertise needs to be made available. I am concerned
that there are people in Defra, in DCMS and in the other part
of DFID, apart from DFID's Overseas Territories Department, for
whom Overseas Territories do not figure in the list of issues
they should be considering. I will give you one or two examples.
One is to do with any of the important multilateral environmental
agreements. There is a real need for engagement in these issues
with the Overseas Territories. That is a huge in, say, something
like the recent Albatross and Petrel Agreement, which is vitally
important for several of the UK territories in the South Atlantic.
Undoubtedly it needs experts in the UK who know about how to deal
with the international fishing industry and what is involved.
They have to translate that expertise, where necessary, to help
the Overseas Territories develop the right sort of legislation
and get the right sort of training. One concern of mine is that
both in the Overseas Territories and in the UK there is a split
between the natural environment and the built environment and
heritage. There are some real issues about that. There is the
current issue in St Helena to do with the Dutch East Indiaman
the Witte Leeuw (White Lion) which is a historic
wreck that needs to be handled properly. St Helena is being got
at by a professional salvage company in the States whose main
interest is in just leaving one or two little things with a local
museum but making considerable profits from the wreck. There are
people like the Crown Estate who have a maritime cultural heritage
in the Code of Practice for Seabed Development and the Nautical
Archaeology Policy Committee. I am pretty certain that no effort
has been made to transmit the expertise that lies in compiling
a document like that to guide the Overseas Territories for whom
it is relevant, of which there is quite a number, so that they
know the right sort of people to contact. Obviously, as well as
the expert knowledge, there may well be the need for some agencies
within the UK Government, not necessarily FCO, to give adequate
support. I would like to see far more people in a variety in different
government departments and other institutions in the UK with interests
that can be vitally affected as applied to the Overseas Territories,
particularly in the marine environment, building into their annual
travel budget the fact that they need to visit some of them. You
cannot really help properly those places that deserve your help
unless you know something about it. You learn by going there.
You have to know the politics as well. Nearly all environmental
issues are fundamentally political issues. You do not get anywhere
without getting the politics right.
Q38 Mr Caton: That brings me on to
my last question. Do you perceive any conflict or potential conflict
between the UK's international responsibilities on something like
biodiversity and the right of the Overseas Territories to determine
their own solutions to some of these problems?
Mr Orr: Yes, but really only in
the sense in which you do not look at them as being foreign; do
not look at it as being them against us. You get exactly the same
thing in the UK. Talk to the Department for Culture, Media and
Sport about some of the sites that they want to put forward as
UK sites within the World Heritage list. Very often there is a
tension about how a management plan will affect the rights of
people living in that area. You will find that there is conflict
when DCMS is waiting to get what seems a very worthy site on board
and the fact that people are reluctant to put together the type
of management structure that will pass muster with the demands
of the very rigorous assessors from the UNESCO's World Heritage
Centre. These issues will arise but it is within the family.
Chairman: Thank you very much for coming,
Mr Orr. You have given us a wealth of evidence and it is fascinating.
I look forward to reading the transcript.
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