Written evidence from Sir Peter Marshall,
KCMG CVO
THE FCO'S
ANNUAL REPORT
AND THE
UNITED KINGDOM'S
INTERNATIONAL PRIORITIES
In Press Notice PN28 (Session 2008-09) 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 21st
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 MP, the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary,
published a ground-breaking White Paper UK International Priorities—A
Strategy for the FCO (Cm 6052). Building on the series of
annual Departmental Reports, it both set out priorities—discussed
and agreed between Departments and agreed by the Prime Minister—for
UK international policy over the next five to 10 years, and described
how the FCO intended to work with others and through its own network
to help the Government meet the aims which it set out.
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 70-76).
Mr Straw produced a second White Paper Active
Diplomacy for a Changing World—The UK's International Priorities
(Cm 6762) in March 2006, by which time, of course, you had
yourself assumed the chairmanship of the Committee. The Press
Notice 28 of 2 May 2007, recorded the Committee's most welcome
intention of ensuring that the White Paper was considered as part
of the Committee's work as a whole, and was to be taken into account
in the context of other reports from the Committee. This was reflected
in the generous publication with the Committee's Report on the
Foreign Policy Aspects of the Lisbon Treaty (HC 120, January
20 2008) of my letter of 6 October 2007, (Ev 141-3) and in the
references to it in the body of the Report itself.
Subsequent developments, particularly the creation
of a new Strategic Framework, as reported to the House of Commons
on 23 January 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 of 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 Europe. That cannot make for
efficiency.
(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 2005-06 on Public Diplomacy (HC 903). In launching
an engrossing FCO study Engagement: Public Diplomacy in a Globalised
World, on 21 July 2008, Mr Jim Murphy, at that time Minister
for Europe in the FCO, emphasised the necessity of carrying public
opinion "at every stage of the policy cycle". To this
end a stream of statements and communiqués will not suffice.
There must be dialogue. Diplomacy has not merely to be public:
it has also to be interactive.
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 hand 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 1962-63, 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 "Brussels"
tends to express itself in criticism of the FCO for lack of resolve
or tenacity. In bargaining terms, moreover, the relative ease
with which the Diplomatic Service continues to attract good recruits
weakens any general case it may make for improvement in terms
and conditions of service.
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 Brussels and elsewhere,
and on the effective conveying to the public of the product of
their vigilance. In my letter of 26 January 2008, I offered some
comments on the Committee's Report on the Foreign Policy Aspects
of the Lisbon Treaty. That Report is a gem in point.
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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