13.1 |
Resources
including
worst case scenarios; Ministers should clearly understand
the
need to
identify and secure those resources before the UK
takes on a similar
commitment
in future.”416
667.
FCO officials
complained of a mismatch between the Government’s
expectations
and the
resources available to the FCO to meet them. While the MOD had
funds
for QIPs
and DFID for longer‑term strategic programmes, the FCO was
“somehow
expected”
to take on elements of both “with neither the resources nor the
means”.
The Foreign
Affairs Committee had commented on more than one occasion that it
was
necessary
and appropriate that costs incurred by the FCO in Iraq (and
Afghanistan) that
were
additional to its mainstream diplomatic and consular roles should
be funded from
the
Reserve. The review commented: “It is not clear whether the FCO
itself formulated
and
presented a sufficiently strong case for extra funding to support
additional work in
the
field.”
668.
On 25 March
2009, Mr Miliband chaired a meeting with “former and current
key
decision‑makers
on Iraq” to consider that review and identify the lessons for the
FCO
669.
The meeting
concluded that the civilian operation in Iraq had been slow to
get
started,
and had been:
“… hampered
in the UK by a shortage of resources – particularly in comparison
with
the
military effort – and an inability to extract what meagre resources
were available
from HMT
[the Treasury] …”
670.
Lord Jay,
FCO Permanent Under Secretary from 2002 to 2006, described
his
experience
of securing funds for operations in Iraq, and the lessons he had
drawn from
it, in his
evidence to the Inquiry:
“I never
felt I had sufficient resources to do anything I was doing in the
Foreign
Office …
You are constantly – it was a constant battle throughout the five
years
I was
there of allocating scarce resources to the priorities that
mattered and, over
the years
we were dealing with Iraq, we were constantly spending more money
and
more
resources on Iraq. Some of those we were getting – we got extra
provision
from the
Treasury, often it was a question of reprioritising the resources
within the
Foreign
Office.
“At the
worst, that meant closing posts in parts of the world which were
less
important
in order that we could put people into Baghdad, Basra, Kabul and
other
places
which were of growing importance.”418
416
Paper FCO,
[undated], ‘Reflections on Basra and the Lessons to be Learned from
the FCO’s
Experience
in Iraq’.
417
Minute FCO
[junior official] to PO [Miliband], 25 March 2009, ‘Iraq
Retrospective’.
418
Public
hearing, 30 June 2010, page 6.
555