Rob Blackhurst

The Guardian - Public

October 2004

Desperate to rid itself of its old boy network image, the Foreign Office may be tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater, writes Rob Blackhurst.

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Suspicions that the Foreign Office is full of "bowler-hatted, pin-striped and chinless characters with a fondness for champagne" run deep in British politics. As far back as the late 1960s the Fulton report, commissioned by Harold Wilson, all but confirmed Sir David Gore Booth's description, and laid into its culture of Oxbridge amateurism. Margaret Thatcher shared their prejudices. "The Foreign Office" she scoffed when holding a Chequers seminar on policy towards the Soviet Union: "what do they know about anything?"

But though successive Prime Ministers have had a low opinion of the Foreign Office, they have been reluctant to reform it. The tiny budget of the FCO compared to the rest of Whitehall left it unscathed. The Treasury pushed for reform in 1995, arguing that other departments had streamlined their top-heavy structures while the Foreign Office had left there's intact. But the political energy needed for reform was always too high. Now, through a combination of Tony Blair's belief in managerial vim, and through organic pressure from the lower echelons of the FCO, reform is being mooted that could live up to its radical billing.

An informal group of young high flyers, given license by Robin Cook, came up with a list of demands that metamorphosed into a full-blown FCO-wide consultation exercise. As Diplomatic correspondent John Dickie documents in The New Mandarins, these views were collated in the Foresight report. Many of the calls for a more enlightened management culture were immediately taken up. There are now dress-down Fridays, and staff are encouraged to address superiors by their first name. Through a new IT system, desk-officers can now send submissions up to Ministers without their advice being stealthily changed by the Permanent Secretary to reflect his own views. Now, if he disagrees, has to state at the end of the document why and suggest an alternative approach. The choice is then left to the Foreign Secretary.

The report also struck a blow at the hierarchy in the Foreign Office. It complained that that the purpose of the swollen ranks of senior management – particularly the array of deputy-undersecretaries – was unclear. Too often, it argued, etiquette trumped effectiveness. Some Ambassadors were given an unnecessarily large staff because of their high rank, rather than the Embassy's local needs.

In parallel to this revolution from the "young Turks", Permanent Secretary Michael Jay has presided over the formulation, for the first time, of the Foreign Office's Strategy. The short term aim is to make the Diplomatic Service more flexible to crises – such as the Bali Bombing in 2002 – after which it was heavily criticised. The long term is to give the FCO clear strategic direction. There will be a move away from desk-officers in London who study the political and social development of particular countries to more issue-based analysis. Experts on conflict prevention and trade are more likely to be valued than regional experts. Critics of the current system argue that the preservation of good bilateral relationships become an end in themselves – with the effect that British interests get lost.

The strategy stresses that "there is no longer a clear distinction between foreign and domestic policy". Dealing with illegal immigration, drug trafficking, international crime and securing energy supplies are therefore added to the traditional FCO responsibilities. This means major changes in structure: Instead of feeding back to geographical departments, embassies will retain expertise themselves. And it is likely that posts will close in areas where they are judged to have "little impact on the achievement of our priorities, and where demand for our service is low". The strategy is a welcome attempt to communicate what the modern Foreign Office. But the reforms in this FCO revolution will not solve the Foreign Office's difficulties.

For, unlike other Government departments, the FCO is not faced with the problem of how to deliver vast and complex social programmes with flexibility. The problem is more fundamental: the Foreign Office's raison d'etre has been assailed by long-term political trends.

Firstly, it has lost its monopoly in dealing with foreigners. The blurring of the distinction between foreign and domestic policy means that other departments have developed their own diplomatic expertise- and the FCO's role is far less clear. The removal of overseas aid from the FCO's remit following the creation of the Department for International Development has led to a major loss in FCO prestige. When the Prime Minister travelled to Africa in 2002 he was accompanied by Clare Short rather than Jack Straw. As the lead department in promoting debt relief in Heavily Indebted Poorer Countries, diplomats have complained that DFID representatives on the ground can carry much more authority than the local Ambassador. In many of those area stressed in the FCO's strategy – drugs, migration, the international economy, the environment – other department are in charge. Now it is the Department for the Environment that lead take the lead on the Kyoto Agreement. And when Bush threatens to introduce steel tariffs, it is the DTI that complains to Washington.

Secondly, the Prime Minister has annexed many of its traditional responsibilities. "Sofa diplomacy" in which major decisions are carved up between the Prime Minister and his opposite number without involving the Foreign Office is associated with Blair, but began in earnest during Thatcher's second term. According to Former UK Ambassador to Washington Sir Nicholas Henderson: "a certain degree of irritation, actual or potential, between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary is the normal law of Whitehall". Though Prime Ministers come to power expecting to focus on the domestic agenda ("don't bother me with all this international stuff" Thatcher told her staff in her first few weeks), media expectations are now that they will fulfil a Presidential role in directing foreign policy.

In trips abroad in her first term, Thatcher was accompanied by the Foreign Secretary and a retinue of senior diplomats. By the end of her term she would travel with only her personal Foreign Policy advisor Charles Powell and Press Secretary Bernard Ingham. Tony Blair hasn't inherited Thatcher's contempt for the Foreign Office, but in practice he sidelines it to an even greater extent. In his frantic shuttle diplomacy to build a coalition before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Blair was taking on work that previous Prime Ministers would have left to their Foreign Secretary. More importantly, Jack Straw wasn't even present at the Camp David talks in 2002 where the decision to go to war was taken.

Blair will also leave his successor with the machinery of Government further weighted towards Downing Street at the expense of the FCO. After the 2001 election, he moved the European Unit from the Cabinet Office into No10 and created Downing Street's own Overseas and Defence Secretariat. These have been, in the words of David Owen, "the most sweeping changes ever made in the conduct of British foreign and security policy".

Michael Jay is right that the Foreign Office needs more "professional expertise, more HR expertise, more IT expertise, more estate expertise" and lacks technical skills in essential areas of Britain's interests abroad like climate change and capital markets. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee recently condemned an over-reliance on generalists that led to "serious mistakes" in the FCO's management of its property portfolio – including turning a potential £6 million profit on the sale of the New York Consul General's residence into a £300 000 loss.

But is management and specialism really the major institutional priority for the Foreign Office? Some sense a danger that the acute political judgment needed to work with Ministers will be jettisoned before the alter of "delivery". Sir John Coles, former Permanent Secretary, says that two of the Foreign Secretaries he had served told him policy advice was what they most wished him to provide, yet over 50 per cent of his time had been deployed on management. Sir Andrew Turnbull, Cabinet Secretary, warns that faith in managerialism has meant that "the skills and leadership needed to negotiate an international treaty or to write then shepherd a piece of legislation through parliament have lacked "parity of esteem" with operational and delivery skills"

The Foreign Office seems to have a collective self-image problem. Wounded by the "educated dilettante" stereotypes, it constantly justifies itself through its efforts to promote British Business and provide consular services. Its more important responsibilities, as outlined in the FCO strategy, to provide "expert foreign policy advice for Ministers and the Prime Minister" are already endangered by the accumulation of power by the Prime Minister. Managerial demands for efficiency and immediate relevance could well hasten the demise of the Foreign Office as a source of political advice. For instance, the ranks of Deputy Secretaries, currently under threat as the FCO tries to meet its 3% efficiency savings, could be a costly loss. According to John Coles, they are the senior diplomats who, unlike Permanent Secretaries, actually know the policy detail.

Downing Street's ramshackle diplomacy in the run-up to war failed in the run-up to war failed to predict that the French would veto the second resolution and failed to take account of the insights of regional experts on the democratization of Iraq. It's unfashionable to argue, but the cult of the clever, politicized "amateur" could have proved very useful.

Rob Blackhurst is Editorial Director of the Foreign Policy Centre. These are his personal views. (www.fpc.org.uk).