Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Funding

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

Not for the first time, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce. I thank him for having introduced this debate today, for having done it so well, and for having set out the challenges so clearly. The first reality of existence, and certainly the first reality for Britain, is that we are all now part of a highly interdependent world. The challenge for politicians in this generation, under Governments of all persuasions, is the contribution, and the value of that contribution, that we can make to meeting this global reality—strengthening global governance and the effective delivery, for people all over the world, of the policies that are necessary.

This is true of migration. We are only beginning to see what is going to face us in the future, with climate change and the rest. It will become a gigantic issue, which will require all nations to co-operate. It is obviously also true of security, and of economic affairs and many other things.

One thing that has come out in the debate is that many significant departments of state have, in effect, their own foreign policy. That makes the Foreign Office’s work in co-ordinating that reality, and in making sure that the policies individual departments are following are well informed and based on sound judgment, more important than ever. That is tremendously demanding.

It is also important to recognise that if we are to make an effective contribution to global governance, we need good intelligence—we need to be able to understand the world in which we are working. That makes the front-line work of the Foreign Office crucial. One of the changes we have to make in any leadership role we may want to play is that we have to understand that we cannot cruise on our past status—we cannot take for granted that the world is going to listen to us because we have been a great power, an imperial power, and the rest. We have to earn our laurels and that means the quality of what we are contributing will be vital. That rams home again the crucial challenges to the Foreign Office and its personnel.

When I was in the Foreign Office, like the noble Lord, I was incredibly impressed by the quality and dedication of the people I was working with. But it is a changing demand and therefore we will have to have in the Foreign Office the people who are right for meeting that demand and playing it in the directions I have indicated.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for introducing this debate. I hope it will be one more spur to seeing that whatever we do with the future of public expenditure and government priorities in this country, the Foreign Office will remain pre-eminent.