Britain’s Diplomatic Priorities

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32050, 26 July 1969, Page 12

Britain’s Diplomatic Priorities

Less emphasis on traditional diplomatic representation and more attention to the British balance of

payments are the main changes recommended in the United Kingdom Diplomatic Service by Sir Vai Duncan’s committee. The service has already been streamlined in recent years by expanding the scope of the Colonial Office to embrace Commonwealth affairs, and then putting all foreign affairs under the control of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Duncan Committee has now recommended to Parlia-

ment a further paring of expenditure and a more commercial bias in the activities of the service.

The changes so far made in Britain’s representation abroad have not recognised that Britain, centrepiece of an empire in dissolution, reflects now no more than a shadow of its once resounding authority. Diplomacy today, the Duncan Report says, should be confined largely to regions where it is important that British interests should be effectively served. Thus the report recommends an “area of concentration’’—Western Europe, North America, Russia and the associated States in Eastern Europe, chjna, and Japan. This, the Duncan Committee says, would cut the Diplomatic Service down to size by closing redundant embassies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and drastically reducing the size of others, while at the Same time modifying their functions to widen the search for trade.

It is clear that changes of this nature might have important political effects, though they might not greatly assist the Treasury’s hopes for a substantial cut in Government expenditure. The report concludes that they might enable a cut of no more than 10 per cent in the budget of some £lO6 millions now provided for the service as a whole. The “Econo- “ mist ” points out that the British diplomatic service would then be about the same size as the French and German, but that whereas France spends £45 million a year, and Germany £2O million a year, on supporting activities of a cultural rather than a commerical nature abroad, Britain spends only £l2 million. “ And in spite of its special duty to “ Commonwealth countries, Britain’s aid to the poor “world is roughly half that of the French and a “good deal less than the German”. The Duncan Committee’s recommendations, it is clear, are neither the only solution to the problem of reducing British expenditure on foreign representation nor even the only approach to the broad issue of priorities.