The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have made that point before and will make it again in respect of the inquiry we are conducting into the intervention in Libya. Just how deep was the knowledge on the basis of which we decided to intervene? It is the depth of knowledge that has been lost.
Another price that is being paid is that locally engaged staff do not really understand the UK context. It has been put to me that the quality of the reports that are
coming through is not quite what it was because they are not addressed to the needs of the Ministers at whom they are aimed. The difficulty is that very overstretched UK-based staff in a post are, in addition, having to oversee the work of the locally engaged employees.
Returning to the issue of Tunisia, I accept that the security of our citizens must be a Government priority and that they cannot commend travel unless they have confidence that our citizens will be reasonably safe, but this decision had serious consequences for Tunisia’s stability and the security of the region. We must therefore be completely confident that we can make informed decisions, rather than simply defensive decisions because of an absence of capability.
Reports are, of course, the standard mechanism by which Select Committees express their views. I believe that Committees can miss opportunities by not getting inside the decision making cycle, or by devoting our energies to conducting retrospective analyses after policy has been formed and executed. The Government should welcome input at an early stage from an informed, cross-party Committee that could make practical, forward-looking suggestions, rather than just telling the Government where they went wrong.
We published our report on the Budget in October last year, almost exactly a month before the spending review, and we made just one recommendation:
“We recommend that the Treasury protect the FCO budget for the period covered by the 2015 Spending Review, with a view to increasing rather than cutting the funds available to support the diplomatic work on which the country’s security and prosperity depend.”
I am delighted that our recommendations were accepted, and that the settlement reflected our central recommendation.
We spent much of our first few evidence sessions looking at how the Foreign Office was preparing for the spending review, and at what scope there was for it to absorb further cuts of the scale already imposed over the previous four years. The Foreign Secretary gave oral evidence twice, and we tried to get a sense of his priorities and what he would seek to preserve. We then took evidence from Sir Simon McDonald, the new permanent under-secretary, and his senior management team, to try to understand the grit and detail of what might be achieved and how if—God forbid—savings of 25% or even 40% were required. That gloomy environment perhaps reflected our rather defensive recommendation, which was obviously designed to hold the current position, but the Committee clearly believes that more resources are needed to support our diplomacy.