Resignation of UK Ambassador to USA Debate
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Desmond Swayne
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Resignation of UK Ambassador to USA
Desmond Swayne Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bowling me such easy balls and I will endeavour to answer as frankly as I can. He will forgive me if I do not commit to a timescale, simply because I do not know: I am not in a position to inform the House with authority. I would merely observe that if one makes a speedy appointment, it is very likely that one would create a vacancy elsewhere, so what is solved in one corner of the world becomes a gap in another. It is very important that we appoint a new ambassador in the proper way so that we get the very best person appointed in the best possible way for the long-term interests of the UK and our relationship with the US.
Where I can totally agree with the hon. Gentleman is in saying that it is everyone’s duty—and that of everyone in this House—to defend our ambassadors. They are our ambassadors doing their duty. If they do something terribly wrong and break all the rules, that is altogether different, but Sir Kim Darroch was, as the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) said from the Labour Front Bench, doing his job and appears to have been punished, as it were, for doing so. We must defend every ambassador who is properly doing their job. We will and we should. As for his final question, I hope that the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) will allow me to defer that a little.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
A leak is, by its very nature, a conspiracy. Who benefits?
Sir Alan Duncan
There are those who break all the rules of decency who think they can benefit from it themselves. Quite who is benefiting from this, I cannot see, but what is quite clear is that the interests of the country do not benefit. This is an absolutely unacceptable leak that has had a very significant consequence that is detrimental to our interest as a country and of course, in an utterly unfair way, to the personal life of a highly capable ambassador and his family.