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DR 353: Letter to the Chairman of the Committee from Sir Peter Marshall, KCMG CVO
The FCO's Annual Report and the
In Press Notice PN28 (Session2008-9) the Committee invited written submissions of evidence in relation to the inquiry which they will be conducting into the FCO Departmental Report 2008-09. Among the issues which the Press Notice refers are "the FCO's framework of objectives and targets and its performance against them".
This is the last year of the present Parliament. The Committee has during its lifetime inquired into a large number of matters of the great national importance. I would therefore venture-for reasons which I hope will become clear-to submit my evidence in the form of a letter to yourself, based on a sequence of questions, within the compass of the Press Notice, but not confined solely to the year under investigation.
(1) Is the Report in its current form able adequately to reflect not only progress in the achievement of declared national objectives, but also the flexibility and the nimbleness which the conduct of successful foreign policy in general in the twenty-first century requires?
(2) Is it similarly able adequately to reflect the extent to which the running in a growing number of issues has of necessity to be made outside the FCO, and notably by No 10 and the Cabinet Office?
(3) Is the work of the Diplomatic Service sufficiently understood, and supported, by public opinion in this country?
(4) Is the Diplomatic Service adequately resourced?
(5) How far are the answers to questions (3) and (4) interrelated?
(6) How would the Foreign Affairs Committee amplify, perhaps with particular reference to questions (1) to (5), the important observation they make in paragraph 6 of the Introduction to their most recent report on their activities (HC 113, January 15 2009) that "in addition to our central task of scrutinising the work of the FCO, we see ourselves as having a useful role to play in informing Members and the wider public about major developments in world affairs and their consequences for the United Kingdom"?
I pursue this sequence of questions in what follows.
(1) The fickle Wood and the durable Trees
Apparently simple questions such as (1) may on occasion require complex answers. This is a case in point.
As they explain in the Introduction to their very interesting report on the FCO Annual Report 2007-08 ( HC 195, February 2009), the Committee have since 1981 inquired annually into FCO expenditure plans and related administrative matters. In 1991 Government Departments first began publishing annual Departmental reports, setting out their work for that year and expenditure plans for the future. The Committee have used these reports as a basis for scrutiny of the FCO's administration and expenditure.
Matters
took a fresh turn in December, 2003,
when the Rt Hon Jack Straw, the
Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary,
published a ground-breaking White Paper UK
The White Paper was a milestone in the conduct of foreign policy, not only in the detail of what it said, but also as confirmation of renewed confidence that there were at the disposal of our country the sinews, skills, experience and resolve to implement these policies and priorities, and to play a responsible and constructive part in a globalised world. The clarity and the calm conviction of the White Paper testified to a state of affairs far removed from Dean Acheson's jibe about our having lost an empire and not yet found a role.
The White Paper was not a reflection of a tranquil state of world affairs, nor of a serene British assessment of it. 9/11 had occurred only two years previously. Even if there was a durable quality to many of the trees, the wood was fickle. Mr Straw provided for this in two ways: first it was the expressly stated intention to update the White Paper regularly; secondly, there was an inbuilt flexibility in the formulations which facilitated adjustment in the light of changing circumstances.
When the Foreign Affairs Committee invited comments on the FCO Annual Departmental Report, covering the year 2003-04, which had just appeared, I inquired whether this invitation extended to observations on Mr Straw's White Paper, and was told that it did. I therefore submitted a memorandum which the Committee were good enough both to publish and to notice favourably in a separate section of their Report (HC 745, paras 35-42 and Ev, pp 70-76).
Mr Straw produced a second White Paper Active Diplomacy for a Changing World - The
UK's
Subsequent developments, particularly the creation of a new Strategic Framework, as reported to the House of Commons on January 23 2008, by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, are absorbingly covered in the Committee's Report on the FCO Annual Departmental Report for 2007-08. The Committee welcomed the changes as in line with their own views.
The Framework, as the Committee noted, is relatively brief. But there have been a number of important Government statements and publications, which provide further insight into what is at issue. The latest FCO Annual Departmental Report, especially in the perspective of the respective Introductions by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and the Permanent Under-Secretary, certainly indicates no lack of flexibility in addressing changed or new situations. It also takes account of the discussion in the Report of the Committee on the FCO's 2007-08 Report, which seemed to concentrate rather on the separate question of possible changes in the relationship between the FCO and other Departments consequent upon, or implied by, the adoption of the new Strategic Framework.
The somewhat different question prompted by the course of events is whether the Framework implies a relatively greater emphasis on the executive function of the Diplomatic Service, as compared with its advisory function, which was so strong a feature of Mr Straw's White Papers, and whether there is in consequence a possible loss of FCO departmental clout. This leads naturally to question (2).
(2) The Spread of Presidential Government
Foreign Ministers have never enjoyed a monopoly in the handling of foreign affairs. But the extent of involvement of Prime Ministers/Heads of Government has greatly increased in recent years for three related reasons: first, the vanishing distinction between internal and external affairs; second, the enormous growth in public interest in foreign affairs, provoked by the impact of external influences on our daily lives, and animated by the information and communication revolution; and third, the spread of the presidential system of management under the control of the Heads of Government, virtually regardless of the formal constitutional position, with corresponding emphasis on the personal links between Heads of Government at or between virtually incessant summit meetings. It is difficult to see this situation being reversed in any near future.
But this does not put the Diplomatic Service out of business. There will always be a requirement for a substantial central core of expertise in the element of what may be called the "foreignness" both in foreign affairs and in their impact at home. The formulation of the fourth of the FCO's Departmental Strategic Objectives - "a flexible global network serving the whole pf the British Government"- makes the point with suitable modesty. The core would be justified in claiming what Bagehot espied as rights of the sovereign in a constitutional monarchy - to be consulted, to encourage and to warn. But it would have to validate the claim by the effective deployment of its expertise, and by inspiring confidence that it was not plugging its own agenda.
Much
depends on the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Foreign and
Commonwealth Secretary, and on
appropriate continuity at Ministerial level in the FCO. During the present Parliament there have been
three Foreign and Commonwealth Secretaries,
and four Ministers for
(3) Public and interactive Diplomacy
In the heyday of classical diplomacy the conduct of foreign policy was primarily a matter of the sovereign's prerogative. Proponents of Realpolitik such as the Prussian general Clausewitz spoke of "the passions of the people" as a resource to be mobilised as a means of furthering a particular policy. The approval of the populace for what was to be put in hand was not a major consideration. Indeed a stock joke of the classical era was that there was no equivalent in such-and-such a language for the phrase "public opinion". The nearest available term was "the stupid people". In 21st century democracies,
public approval of the conduct of foreign policy is ultimately a sine qua non. The Committee has naturally devoted a good
deal of attention to the question. I
have in mind in particular their Third Report of Session 2005-6 on Public Diplomacy (HC903). In launching an engrossing FCO study Engagement: Public Diplomacy in a Globalised
World, on Curiously enough, the latest FCO Annual Departmental Report makes no mention of this event. It has to be said that there is a glaring contrast between the insistence on carrying public opinion with you at every stage on the one and the Government's strenuous efforts to shield the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty from the expression of public opinion on the other.
(4) Paying for what you want by way of International Involvement
While there have been over the years a number of outside examinations of Diplomatic Service resourcing, they have, understandably perhaps, been more concerned with getting value for money out of Diplomatic Service expenditure, or with living within our national means, than with a dispassionate analysis of what was required to ensure delivery of what the nation was asking of the Diplomatic Service.
The last such investigation - and it could also be said to be the first such - was by the Plowden Committee, which reported in 1964. (Report of the Committee on Representational Services Overseas appointed by the Prime Minister under the Chairmanship of Lord Plowden 1962-3, Cmnd 2276, February, 1964). The background to the appointment of the Committee was a feeling that a review was necessary both to see how the far-reaching organisational reforms introduced during, and after, the Second World War were working out in practice. The world in which we lived, the Report noted, "was no longer the world of 1943 or even a world which could be foreseen in 1943".
The Plowden Report is a superb analytical and prescriptive achievement. Its simultaneous mastery of the big picture and of operational and administrative detail gives it an authority that attaches to no other document on the subject. While it enjoyed an immediate harvest of much needed improvements in diplomats' terms and conditions of service, its wider policy, organisational, training and staffing recommendations largely fell victim to the economic crisis which coincided with the return of a Labour Government a few months after the Report's appearance. The Report is well worth revisiting.
(5) Adequate Resources depend on adequate Understanding and Support
Question (5) can be simply answered - strongly in the affirmative. We cannot expect the Diplomatic Service to be adequately resourced unless there is adequate public understanding and support of its role. At the moment the question has to be asked to what extent it really enjoys either advantage.
This, unhappily is an area where the writ of
prejudice and indifference runs freely. Unlike the Royal Navy traditionally, for example,
the Diplomatic Service has no natural or instinctive constituency at
home. It is all too easily associated in
the public mind with standing up for foreigners instead of ourselves. The suggestion that it carries out the
policies of the democratically elected government is met with dark suspicion
that, in the manner of Yes Minister, it bullies and undermines Ministers rather
than obeying them. And the general
mistrust and distaste for "
There are no quick fixes. Patient exposition and interaction on what the Diplomatic Service is doing and how and why it does it are indispensable. But perhaps independent yet authoritative assistance in accomplishing the task may be required.
(6) Much will have more
As noted in question (6) above, the Committee in their latest report on their activities, explain, not for the first time, that they see themselves as "having a useful role to play in informing Members and the wider public about major developments in world affairs and their consequences for the UK".
I believe this proposition to be of very great importance. It is surely clear that the 21st century will require a reassessment of the balance between representative democracy and direct democracy as we have known it for the last century and a half. The blogosphere is upon us. Whatever the reassessment, the Select Committee system which has so amply proved its worth, cannot but figure prominently in it. . This must surely apply in particular to our involvement in European Union affairs. The results of the recent European Parliament elections have ominous implications for representative democracy at the EU level.
At a microdiplomatic, no less than at a macropolitical level, the Committee are uniquely placed. First, the wide range of their own activities and the unrivalled access to those responsible for the conduct of our foreign policy which they enjoy give them a most authoritative and comprehensive appreciation of world developments and of how they impact on this country. The more we hear from them the better.
Secondly, and again by virtue of their activities, the Committee are themselves eminently accessible to the concerned public, not least via public sessions and the regular invitations to make submissions on issues which are the subject of their inquiries.
Thirdly, the extent to which, as a consequence of our membership of the
European Union, our affairs are
centrally managed beyond our own borders
places a premium on both a mastery by the Committee of what is
transpiring in
Fourthly, the Committee's work is testimony to the way in which substance and process are inextricably linked. The Committee in consequence are better able than anyone else to form a balanced and realistic view of what the Diplomatic Service need in terms of resources in order to do what is asked of it.
While I underestimate neither the effort that such an investigation would require nor the opportunity cost in terms of other important work foregone which such an effort would involve, I submit that, for the reasons to which I draw attention in this letter, there is a strong case for the Committee either undertaking a review along the lines of the Plowden Committee referred to under question (4) above or ensuring that such a review is put in hand. Suggestions that the present is an unpropitious moment for such a review may be received with composure. Bureaucracy is prone to resisting the prospect of change on grounds of Unripe Time, however favourable the circumstances. The time to buy shares is when others are selling them.
17 September 2009
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