The Role of the FCO in UK Government
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House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee The Role of the FCO in UK Government This is a volume of submissions, relevant to the inquiry ‘The Role of the FCO in UK Government’, which have been reported to the House. Only those submissions written specifically for the Committee have been included. List of written evidence Page 1 Dr Scott James Ev 1 2 Dr Oliver Daddow Ev 8 3 The Rt Hon Lord Owen Ev 14 4 Professor Daryl Copeland Ev 24 5 Dr Graeme Davies and Dr Robert Johns Ev 33 6 Sir Edward Clay Ev 46 7 Charles Crawford CMG Ev 53 8 The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Ev 63 9 Professor Tony Chafer Ev 68 10 Professor Ritchie Robertson, Professor Sarah Colvin and Dr Peter Thompson Ev 70 11 LSE IDEAS Ev 72 12 Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ev 74 13 City of London Corporation Ev 114 14 UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum Ev 117 15 Society for Italian Studies Ev 122 16 Anthony Aust Ev 123 17 Oliver Miles CMG Ev 126 18 Sir Michael Wood, KCMG Ev 130 19 Sir John Graham, GCMG Ev 136 20 Sir David Logan Ev 137 21 Sir Peter Ricketts, GCMG Ev 141 22 Daniel Korski Ev 147 23 Catarina Tully Ev 153 24 Rt Hon Jack Straw MP Ev 159 25 Peter W Marshall and other former members of the FCO Ev 160 26 Sir Peter Marshall, KCMG GVO Ev 163 27 CBI Ev 205 28 Professor Hussein Kassim Ev 211 29 Alastair Newton – supplementary evidence Ev 216 30 Professor Dr Sonja Puntscher Riekmann Ev 218 31 Foreign and Commonwealth Office – supplementary evidence Ev 221 32 Sir Peter Ricketts Office – further evidence Ev 286 33 Rt Hon Chris Huhne MP Ev 288 34 Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) Ev 289 35 Carne Ross Ev 292 Written evidence from Dr Scott James The Changing Role of the FCO in the UK EU Policy-Making Process Introduction: The research and recommendations contained in this report are drawn from a doctoral research project titled ‘Singing from the Same Hymn Sheet? Europeanisation and European Policy Making in the UK and Irish Core Executives, 1997-2007’ completed at the University of Manchester between 2005 and 2008, and subsequent research conducted at King’s College London during 2009. The findings are based largely upon the detailed testimonies of sixty serving and former ministers, senior and junior officials, and special advisors drawn from across the main departments of state. The interviews were conducted on a non-attributable basis according to Chatham House rules. The research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and is to be published as a monograph by Manchester University Press in 2011.1 Executive Summary: • Since 2001 the EU policy making process in the UK has undergone fundamental reform, strengthening the strategic capabilities of the Cabinet Office to the extent that it has become the Prime Minister’s first source of advice and expertise on EU policy. • Although the FCO retains important formal responsibilities for managing EU policy, its role and influence within Whitehall has been challenged by three developments: increasing EU expertise and networking by departmental policy leads; rationalisation and reorganisation within the FCO’s Europe Directorate; and the waning influence of the formal EU cabinet sub-committee. • These changes are driven in part by longer-term structural developments that have undermined foreign ministries across Europe: the growing importance and frequency of European Council summits; the increasingly technical and specialist nature of EU policy dossiers; and the tendency to reach preliminary agreements through informal pre-Council discussions. • The FCO has responded by developing a niche role which seeks to add value to UK EU policy in three respects: by reallocating resources to the UK Permanent Representation in Brussels (UKRep); maintaining and exploiting the UK’s wider diplomatic network of European embassies; and leading efforts to encourage departments to engage more effectively with EU counterparts. • The reforms have had three unintended consequences: exacerbating the existing conflict of interest between the Cabinet Office’s coordination and strategic roles; further blurring the division of responsibilities for EU policy within and between the Cabinet Office and FCO; and contributing to bureaucratic overload by raising expectations beyond that which could be realistically met. • The report recommends that the FCO should concentrate at what it is best at, namely strengthening its wider diplomatic network, renewing efforts across Whitehall to promote more effective strategic networking, and refocusing its activities on formulating and articulating a clearer strategic vision for European integration. • It also recommends that collaboration between the Cabinet Office and FCO could be reinforced by convening a new inter-ministerial committee on EU policy strategy to be chaired by the Prime Minister; and by redefining the role and position of the Minister for Europe so that they are based in both the Cabinet Office and FCO. 1 Detailed Submission: Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office 1. The role of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in the management of national EU policy has changed fundamentally over the past decade. For most of the time since the UK’s accession in 1973, the FCO has been at the heart of the process and, crucially, has remained the principal source of foreign policy advice on EU affairs to the prime minister. Traditionally this has taken the form of two private secretaries seconded from the FCO to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). By contrast the European Secretariat (COES) and the Overseas and Defence Secretariat (ODS) in the Cabinet Office have traditionally focused on Whitehall coordination.2 2. In 2001 Tony Blair decided to establish a stronger ‘in house’ foreign policy capability within the PMO, leading to the merger of the positions of private secretary and head of the Cabinet Office secretariat. This created a new ‘Advisor on EU Affairs and Head of the Cabinet Office European Secretariat’ and an ‘Advisor on Foreign Affairs and Head of the Overseas and Defence Secretariat’. Both had offices located within No.10 and were promoted to the rank of permanent secretary. In addition, a small team of four foreign policy advisors was established within the PMO composed of secondees from the FCO and experts from outside government. By contrast arrangements for domestic policy remained largely unchanged. 3. The real significance of these changes has been the extent to which they have reshaped patterns of power dependency at the centre of the Whitehall EU policy network. The COES now serves as the Prime Minister’s first source of advice and expertise on EU policy. Around two thirds of its workload is now prescriptive and devoted to delivering the Prime Minister’s priorities across government, with only one third expended on traditional coordination or dispute resolution. Although departments have become less reliant on COES for coaching, monitoring and advice, its capacity to provide strategic direction has been greatly enhanced as a consequence of the perception that it is much closer to the PMO than other Cabinet Office secretariats and is viewed as an instrument of the Prime Minister’s will across Whitehall. As a result, departments increasingly look towards it for a guide as to what policy line to pursue in Europe.3 The increasing burden and expectations that this generates has in turn necessitated a near doubling in the size of the secretariat since the late 1990s. Foreign and Commonwealth Office 4. The FCO retains important formal responsibilities in the management of UK EU policy, including: outlining the government’s overarching European strategy, providing briefings for ministers prior to key Council meetings, and chairing the cabinet sub-committee on EU policy. In several important respects however this traditional coordinating role has been challenged as a consequence of three developments. 5. First, the continued value of the FCO to other departments is inversely related to their internal capacity for diplomatic expertise. For well-resourced departments with extensive bilateral connections and experience of lobbying (notably the Treasury, BIS and DEFRA) interaction with home-based FCO officials is minimal. But as engagement and networking by other departments has increased over the past decade (driven, in part, by the 1998 Step Change programme [see below]), so their dependency on the FCO for advice and support has declined. 6. Second, this trend has contributed to a major reorganisation of European business within the FCO. Since 2004 the internal and external aspects of EU policy have been centralised within a single Europe Directorate organised around thematic rather than geographical structures. The introduction of this ‘lead unit’ system means that responsibility for managing bilateral relations with EU member states are divided between several policy-focused groups. But it has also led to the further rationalisation of country-specific expertise. This is reflected in the fact that although the Europe 2 Directorate briefly expanded in response to the 2005 UK EU Presidency, staff numbers have since been cut back significantly and resources redeployed to ‘front line’ diplomats based in overseas embassies. 7. Third, the cabinet sub-committee on EU policy is widely perceived as a ‘rubber stamp’ for decisions effectively taken elsewhere: not least through the informal Joint Ministerial Committee (Europe) which incorporates representatives from the devolved governments, and the Cabinet Office ‘Friday’ meeting which is chaired by the Prime Minister’s EU policy advisor to serve as a ‘clearing house’ for all EU-related issues. By 2004 the committee was struggling to attract a high level of attendance from cabinet ministers, and was henceforth convened in ‘virtual’ form as a mechanism through which EU policy was formally cleared through written correspondence. Since then however the sheer pace and volume of EU-related correspondence has caused the system to become severely overloaded and detrimental to effective decision making.