It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). He made a very detailed, perceptive and interesting speech, which l thoroughly enjoyed.
The cut in funding for the Foreign Office, on top of the 10% budget cut since 2010, is directly contrary to the United Kingdom’s key strategic interests, and might prevent the Department from effectively addressing serious organisational issues of its own. We cannot properly address the threats to our security from Daesh solely by dropping bombs in Syria, Libya or Iraq, and threats to our economy from events in China and in the eurozone cannot simply be washed away by the Treasury. We need to equip the FCO not just to meet the challenges of today, but to rise to the unknown challenges of tomorrow. There must be a renewed focus on aid and diplomacy in all that it does.
A recent Foreign Affairs Committee report, “The FCO and the 2015 Spending Review, stated:
“In an increasingly unstable world, the Government relies on the FCO to have the necessary infrastructure in place so that it can make critical decisions at a moment’s notice. Over the last Parliament the country was found to be lacking in expertise, analytical capability and language skills to manage the fallout from the Arab Spring and the crisis in Ukraine. In 2010 it might have been thought that expertise on Benghazi, Donetsk, or Raqqa was surplus to requirement. These have become vital areas for our national security, evidencing the real dangers of an under-funded Foreign and Commonwealth Office”.