Resignation of UK Ambassador to USA Debate
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Chris Bryant
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Resignation of UK Ambassador to USA
Chris Bryant Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
Yes, I have confidence in the system; what has happened here is that somebody has abused it. The inquiry is under way, and I hope the House will understand that it is probably unhelpful to give a running commentary on what it might have found from one day to another, but it is going ahead very fully. As I and others have said in this House, if it turns out that we find the culprit and they have broken the law, the police may well become involved and there may well be criminal proceedings.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
This is a truly exceptional moment: not for 175 years has the Head of State of a nation friendly to the United Kingdom said that they would refuse to deal with a British envoy sent by the British state. This is behaving worse than Chavez’s Venezuela, which would never have done such thing; it is behaving worse than Iran. And to be honest the concatenation of events has humiliated this country. I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States of America, but I also want to stand shoulder to shoulder first with our Foreign Office diplomats, and for that matter with our Prime Minister, who has been humiliated directly by the United States President. When we are appointing a new ambassador to the United States of America in these truly exceptional moments, will the Minister make sure that the candidates for that post appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee so that this House can take a view?
Sir Alan Duncan
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that this is unprecedented. I do not think that this has ever happened before. As the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East said, a lot of these codes of conduct and assumed rules of the game are rather being turned on their head. This means that the normal process of diplomacy has become extraordinarily complicated by such trends in the world. The normal responses and expected reactions have to be crafted differently in circumstances such as this. In that sense, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In terms of having approval hearings before his Committee, of course I cannot give that guarantee—
Sir Alan Duncan
I see that he is trying to entice me to do so. I can but say that the appointment process will be of the sort that has taken place in the past.
Sir Alan Duncan
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his words. He points out what is evident to anybody who visited Washington when Sir Kim was ambassador. There was a very cheerful team and a great esprit de corps. He was very popular, and there were very good parties, which I hope will continue.
Sir Alan Duncan
Yes, I hope I am allowed back. Sir Kim was absolutely excellent.
The other thing my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) allows me to point out is that one of the great tragedies of this is that the leaked communications were not at all representative of the tenor of the vast majority of those emanating from Washington. If the President were able to read them, I think he would have been perfectly happy.