UK Government-US Administration engagement
8. We
conclude that the division of responsibilities between UK Government
Ministers in dealing with the US Administration is working well;
and that, in particular, the development of the Deputy Prime Minister's
role as an interlocutor with the US Vice-President is useful,
given the increased policy-making importance of the Vice-President
in successive recent Administrations. Whether or not future UK
Governments have a Deputy Prime Minister, we recommend that they
designate an appropriate senior interlocutor for the US Vice-President.
(Paragraph 63)
9. We conclude that
the Government's creation of the position of National Security
Adviser has been helpful for the Government's engagement with
the US Administration on security issues. (Paragraph 66)
FCO US network
10. US
international policy profoundly affects UK interests, sometimes
in the weightiest areas of Government action. Tracking and influencing
US international policy, as we believe the UK Government should
do, needs to be undertaken systematically and thoroughly. However,
the open and dispersed nature of US international policy-making
in Washington makes this especially challenging. The task requires
well-informed targeting of action and a major investment of diplomatic
resources at appropriate levels of seniority, in order to be able
to engage effectively with the various parts of the Administration,
the Congress, the media, academia and think-tanks. We are pleased
that the particular budgetary strains which were affecting the
FCO's US network at the time of our predecessor's Report in 2010
appear to have eased; and that the FCO has increased staff numbers
in the Washington Embassy and the US network, notwithstanding
its broader shift of diplomatic resources to emerging powers outside
the Transatlantic area. We recommend that the FCO should state
in its response to this Report whether the recent increased staffing
levels across the US network are sufficient to ensure it is fully
sighted on US policy development, and that in future the FCO should
conduct such staffing assessments on a regular basis. (Paragraph
72)
11. The idea of using
the Washington Embassy as a site to build relationships with emerging
country diplomats based in the US capital, as well as with US
policy-makers, strikes us as an effective and valuable use of
the resource. (Paragraph 74)
The UK and US making strategy together: the Joint
Strategy Board
12. We
agree with the apparent rationale for the Government's creation
of the UK-US Joint Strategy Board (JSB) with the US in May 2011—namely,
that there would be potential value in the two Governments jointly
examining key strategic issues and developing coordinated responses
in a more structured way. However, in the absence of any public
information about the matters considered by the JSB or any specific
resulting action, it is difficult to assess the extent to which
the operation of the JSB so far is realising this potential. If
the JSB has effectively been downgraded to an umbrella framework
for ad hoc contacts, dominated by immediate rather than strategic
issues, the missed opportunity would be a matter for regret. (Paragraph
91)
- On the evidence available to us, we conclude
that the creation of the JSB appears to have been announced over-hastily
during President Obama's State Visit to the UK in May 2011, without
adequate preparation having been put in place for the Board's
effective operation; and that the Government has been reluctant
to acknowledge to us the gap between the impression of the JSB
conveyed by the May 2011 announcement of the Board's creation
and the reality three years on. We would have been open to any
well-founded explanation of a change of plan offered by the Government.
However, having set out the initial ideas for the operation of
the JSB in some detail in a press release, the Government then
failed to communicate this evolution, and we have had to expend
considerable effort to gather even a limited amount of further
information about the Board. We would have expected the Government
to issue an updating statement, perhaps at the time of the promised
review of the Board in May 2012, and we see no reason why it could
not have done so. We recommend that the Government should consider
whether there are wider lessons for Government communications
from this episode. We further recommend that the Government should
set out in its Response to this Report steps that it will take
to report regularly to Parliament on the work of the JSB. (Paragraph
92)
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