The Foreign Office has not regained its footing under Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, staff morale is low, not enough staff are posted abroad and there is an unsustainable lack of expertise on Russia, a report by the independent think tank the Institute for Government has found.
It also found that the merger between the Department for International Development (DfID) and the Foreign Office remains incomplete and relations with other Whitehall departments are strained.
Although the war in Ukraine is the No. 1 priority for Truss, who is now vying to be the next leader of the Conservative Party, the report found that the number of full-time equivalent staff working in the Indo-Pacific region is three times that in the eastern region Department of Europe and Central Asia.
Only 160 employees cover the entire region and only 20 of them are in Moscow. The number of employees in the department who speak Russian at an advanced level has fallen from 83 in December 2017 to less than 60 in February 2022.
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The report said: “We were told of strained relations between the various parts of government involved in implementing the sanctions policy – which included the Foreign Office, the Treasury and the Home Office,” adding that this stemmed from an apparent reluctance of the Foreign Office to commit resources to the sanctions policy “leaving the department on the back foot when the issue rose to the top of the agenda in February”.
The report, titled How the Foreign Office Needs to Change, points to a major reshuffle of ministerial and official portfolios at the FCDO, as recently as March 2022, as a sign that “the department is not yet on its feet. Many we spoke to also spoke of long-standing problems with morale within the department, particularly among former DfID staff – many of whom see the merger as more of a takeover by the FCO than a marriage of equals.’
In May, following scathing criticism of the Foreign Office’s handling of the Afghan exodus last August, including calls for the permanent under-secretary, Sir Philip Barton, to resign, Truss led major changes to the department, including the appointment of a second permanent secretary with greater responsibility for political work. The institute said the reorganisation, which was not reported to parliament, was a sign that the merger had not worked as intended or created a single culture.
The restructuring in turn led to the resignation of Africa Director Moazzam Malik. He later said the Foreign Office desperately needed stability as well as clear, long-term goals, adding that pursuing the “national interest meant nothing”.
Alluding to conflicts within the department over the role and scale of foreign aid, he said “development cooperation still has an important role to play in achieving results in the real world, but if it is used as a bargaining chip in a transactional geopolitical game, it will provide little value , low impact, lead to scandals and damage the UK’s authority internationally”.
In the report, the institute pointed out that seven of the nine directors-general are ex-FCDO staff, as are the two permanent secretaries – which “will not help to reassure ex-DfID staff that the merger is not effectively a takeover”.
Although the UK’s aid as a share of GDP remains higher than that of four of its G7 partners, the report said the major “aid cuts have broken a manifesto promise, harmed the UK’s international relations kingdom and has increased the feeling among some European countries, in particular, that the post-Brexit UK, presented as a ‘global Britain’, is actually more isolated’.
Backing up its claim of low morale, the report pointed to a survey of civil service employees which showed engagement had fallen below the civil service average last year.
One former foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, told the institute he believed the department had suffered “systematic humiliation”, with many of its key roles being taken over by the Cabinet or the National Security Council.
It also found that only 29% of “UK-based staff”, just over 2,165, actually worked overseas, as it is cheaper to hire local staff than to send UK-based civil servants abroad. In 2008, more than 50% of UK employees worked overseas. Local staff do not have diplomatic immunity, the same security clearance or working hours.
The report adds that staff morale needs urgent protection by creating a culture where complaints can be raised without fear of reprisal and with confidence that concerns will be addressed.
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