The House of Commons' Foreign Affairs Committee has drawn heavily on evidence presented by an LSE team in a new report which calls for the role of the Foreign Office (FCO) to be protected and strengthened.
LSE IDEAS, the research centre for international affairs, diplomacy and strategy, had presented MPs with written evidence that Britain's standing abroad would suffer unless the FCO was put back at the centre of UK government.
The committee, publishing its report The Role of the FCO in UK Government on 12 May, quoted extensively from the LSE IDEAS submission, edited by Professor Michael Cox and Dr Nicholas Kitchen.
MPs seized on the analysis from IDEAS that the diminishing role of the FCO was due to changes taking place within the department and within the Government as a whole. They accepted its diagnosis of a shift towards prime-ministerial control of foreign policy decisions and highlighted the loss of regional expertise highlighted by IDEAS as a particularly worrying issue.
IDEAS first set out its analysis of the problems in its own special report The Future of UK Foreign Policy published in November 2010 and featuring contributions from senior politicians, civil servants and diplomatic staff. One of its key suggestions was the importance of maintaining embassies and consulates abroad as they are effective and influential.
Many of its conclusions were echoed in the Foreign Affairs Committee's report which concluded: 'We regard FCO's network of overseas posts as integral to its ability to discharge its foreign policy functions and to the ability of the UK government as a whole effectively to pursue its policies internationally.' The committee recognised the efforts being made by the Government to conduct effective foreign policy and the limitations on its resources.'
The full report of the Foreign Affairs Committee |
The written evidence presented by LSE IDEAS |
The full LSE IDEAS report The Future of UK Foreign Policy |is available for download at a cost of £7.50
For more information contact LSE IDEAS 020 7107 5060 n.j.kitchen@lse.ac.uk| or LSE Press Office on 020 7955 7060 pressoffice@lse.ac.uk|
posted 13 May 2011