I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee for bringing their report to the debate this afternoon.
From both sides of the House, there was a common theme: the importance of an effective diplomatic service and Foreign Office in advancing and defending the interests of the United Kingdom in the face of multiple challenges in different parts of the world. I thank in particular those hon. Members who paid tribute to the work of individual members of Her Majesty’s diplomatic service. That gives me the opportunity not only to thank those individuals myself, but to put on the record my own thanks and those of the ministerial team for the professionalism and commitment that members of the diplomatic service have shown to us, as they have to previous Governments. They continue to work day in, day out on behalf of the people of this country.
I want to move on to the spending review and the settlement for the FCO, but I cannot quite let the remarks of the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) go without comment. I completely understand that it is the job of an Opposition spokesman to try to find criticisms to make of the Government—I remember doing that myself some years back—but the degree of amnesia that infected her judgment on this occasion was astounding. It was as if the years from 1997 to 2010 had been airbrushed out of the historical record.
It is worth reminding the House that under the Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the Foreign Office’s budget was cut, posts were closed, the language school was axed altogether, the library was scrapped, and we got to the craziest situation of all. After the Treasury had removed the traditional protection arrangement that it had offered against the Foreign Office’s exposure to foreign exchange movements, as a result of the payment of salaries and bills by overseas posts, the hon. Lady’s former colleague, Mr David Miliband, was reduced to having to draft in members of the diplomatic service to establish a hedge fund unit inside the Foreign Office so that the Foreign Office could
try and run a hedging operation of its own. I do not want to hear too many lectures from the Labour party about Foreign Office expenditure and sensible budgeting.
The Foreign Affairs Committee and the House as a whole are entitled to ensure that the Government are held properly to account for delivery of their responsibilities in the field of foreign and security affairs. My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate and, I think, the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) asked about two or three specific items in the estimates. I am going to have to write to them about two of those, but I can give them some satisfaction on the question of the battle of New Orleans, because I have been passed some additional advice. The purpose of the occasion was to commemorate the British dead in that battle and celebrate the 200 years of peace that have followed between the United Kingdom and the United States. The Foreign Office has contributed $215,000; other contributors have included the state of Louisiana and Boeing, and there has also been a significant personal contribution from our honorary consul in New Orleans.