Cash limits 'hinder Foreign Office'

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The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said the recent Comprehensive Spending Review represented an annual "real terms" reduction of 0.2% in the Foreign Office (FCO) budget.

The committee said it compared with an average 2.1% real terms increase for other Government departments and would inevitably affect the work of the FCO.

"The Comprehensive Spending Review settlement for the FCO, one of the tightest in Whitehall, risks jeopardising the FCO's important work," the committee warned.

It issued a warning that the programme of upgrading security at Britain's embassies and diplomatic posts abroad must not be disrupted due to a lack of cash, "since it affects the safety of staff".

The committee said that it was "very concerned" that almost half the funds allocated to preventing future wars in potential troublespots around the world had been diverted to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The FCO should not have to direct funds away from long-term conflict prevention into crisis management," it said.

While the committee welcomed the increase in diplomatic staff in high priority postings such as Afghanistan, India and China, it said that such redeployments needed to take account of the impact on the FCO's network as a whole. It urged the Government to reconsider plans to cut the network of defence attaches after the FCO unilaterally withdrew its contribution to the defence attache budget, which it had previously funded jointly with the Ministry of Defence.

It said that it was "critically important" to a number of Government departments and agencies - including those involved in licensing arms exports or assisting in the destruction of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction - that the attaches had the funding to carry on their work.

The committee also expressed concern about the high cost of telephone calls made by British nationals abroad to some UK embassies where call-handling had been contracted out to a private firm, Abtran Ltd. The average cost of a call made in Spain to the British embassy was £3, in Germany it was £3.32, in the United States it was £5, while in Canada it was £8 - a figure described as "unacceptable" by the committee.