AN APPROPRIATE APPROACH TO PERFORMANCE
MEASUREMENT?
64. In June 2007, the Treasury Committee concluded
that the function of the new system of targets across Whitehall
Departments was "unclear". It explained :
First, Public Service Agreements have been seen as
a form of quasi-contract, specifying the performance expected
from departments (or cross-departmental programmes) in exchange
for the public spending invested in them. Given that a number
of departments have agreed Comprehensive Spending Review spending
plans without apparently agreeing Public Service Agreement targets
at the same time it is unclear what part Public Service Agreement
targets play in spending settlements. Secondly, the advent of
Delivery Plans and Departmental Strategic Objectives raise issues
about how these three sets of plans and targets fit together.[98]
We share the Treasury Committee's concerns.
65. In the FCO's case, there is a further degree
of uncertainty over its 2008-2011 framework of targets. On 19
July 2007, the new Foreign Secretary gave a speech at Chatham
House in which he questioned the value of having as many as ten
SP/DSOs:
[…] where should the UK concentrate its global
effort: where are we most needed, and where can we most effect
change? The FCO currently has ten "strategic priorities".
All are important. But can any organisation really have ten priorities?
[…] policy priorities need rigour and clarity.[99]
Based on this speech, the FCO is currently holding
a public consultation on "new diplomacy". Its website
invites views on three "key questions", including: "What
should our priorities be?"[100]
66. When we asked Sir Ivor Roberts about the FCO's
SPs, he expressed scepticism about the entire exercise of performance
measurement:
[…] I am basically opposed to rigid, strategic
priorities, objective setting and so on. That is not the way in
which to deal with the problems that emerge from day to day. Today's
events in Russia did not exactly come out of the clear blue sky,
but they would certainly not have been a top priority three months
ago. We need infinite flexibility and intellectual agility to
deal with such problems.[101]
In particular, he criticised number 4 for being "apple
pie and motherhood stuff […] so vague and bromide-like that
[…it was not] worth putting down on paper and developing
measurements towards" [102]and
number 9 for being simply "a job description".[103]
Sir Ivor argued that diplomacy was unsuitable for performance
measurement:
[…] some things cannot be measured—diplomacy
is not that sort of thing. […] it is an art, not a science
[…] There is a famous Spanish proverb: "Traveller, roads
are made by walking." […] that is how you have to approach
diplomacy. You have to walk that path yourself, and put down markers
as you go. There are no guidelines. Simply to see it all in terms
of PSAs and SP2s and all the rest of it is to reduce diplomacy
to a mathematical science, which it does not begin to approximate
to.[104]
67. In Radio 4's PM programme, he further argued
that because it was spending too much time trying to meet targets,
the FCO was less able to perform "core functions", such
as advising ministers on policy.[105]
Sir Peter Ricketts responded to Sir Ivor's comments as follows:
Of course you can poke fun at management speak, which
I try to avoid where I can, but the idea that the Civil Service
is trying to manage itself in modern ways, make efficient use
of public money and open itself up to the same disciplines as
the private sector is not stupid, actually, and it is a pity to
suggest that it is. I have great respect for the individual concerned,
who was a fine diplomat, but the younger generation coming on
behind him are much more comfortable looking at the public service
in that way.[106]
However, Sir Ivor told us that he had received over
100 e-mails in response to his valedictory, many from junior members
of the FCO who supported his comments.[107]
68. Sir Ivor did, however, believe that it was important
to have some form of strategy for foreign policy. He told us,
"I certainly do not believe that you should reduce it simply
to the level of a sort of Lord Salisbury floating lazily down
the stream, putting out the occasional boat hook"[108]
He suggested having objectives "in very broad terms",
such as "that you want to protect British interests and respect
for international law".[109]
69. We conclude
that the current system of performance targets is less appropriate
for the FCO than it is for other departments, and may absorb time
which could be better spent on core functions. We also conclude
that ten strategic priorities is too many. We recommend that both
targets and priorities be simplified and reduced in number and
we hope that the FCO's consultation on the "new diplomacy"
will assist in this process.
70. As well as asking what the FCO's SP/DSOs should
be, the Department's public consultation on new diplomacy is also
focusing on how best the FCO can coordinate foreign policy across
UK Government and engage beyond Whitehall.[110]
We asked Lord Ashdown for his observations on the way foreign
policy was currently carried out. He argued that Ministries of
Foreign Affairs worldwide, including the FCO, were "somewhat
puzzled by the world in which they suddenly, blinkingly find themselves."[111]
He explained:
[…] our Foreign and Commonwealth Office was
created at a time when we were living in an information-poor structure.
[…W]e needed ambassadors and embassies […] to know what
was happening. Ministries of Foreign Affairs now live in an information-rich
world and, frankly, I think this has discombobulated them. They
are not quite sure what their job is because, by and large, an
ambassador […] can rather rarely provide you with an insight
that is not available from other means, perhaps from the Head
of State picking up the phone or sending an e-mail.[112]
71. Lord Ashdown argued that the FCO was not "doing
the job it ought to be doing in the modern age".[113]
He believed cooperation across Whitehall and with international
partners was vital to modern diplomacy and that the FCO should
model itself on modern commerce which had "stripped down
the vertical hierarchies, […] networked organisations and
restructured them to serve their customer."[114]
72. We asked Sir Peter Ricketts whether it might
now be worth the FCO taking a Government-wide approach to its
overseas network. He told us that the FCO was moving "increasingly"
towards staffing Posts with individuals from across Whitehall,
with the FCO playing a "small but enabling part". His
only "reservation" was that if staff from other Departments
were to be the only British representative in a country they would
have to be prepared to deal with any eventuality, which could
mean taking on a wider role than their usual area of work.[115]
The FCO has established a "Future Role of the FCO" project
"specifically to review with our key Whitehall partners their
future planned international engagement and what the FCO's distinctive
contribution to this will be".[116]
73. Lord Ashdown believed that the FCO's role should
be to provide project management:
[…What the FCO] needs to become good at—and
what it is very bad at, by the way—is project management.
It is very good at reporting and sitting dizzily above the scene
and providing elegant telegrams for home, but what it should be
saying is, "Here are the improvements that are needed to
resolve this problem: here is the […MoD] contribution, here
is the Treasury contribution and here is […DfID's] contribution
of aid; here is what we can do by bringing some police reforms
in."[117]
We consider the FCO's project management skills further
in Chapter 5, in the context of the FCO's capital underspend.
74. Sir Ivor Roberts argued that it was important
to have only one Department in the lead on foreign policy:
I think that we need to have a clear understanding
of who runs foreign policy, and at the moment the lines are so
blurred that it is very difficult to know. […] whether it
is run by a Department called DFID or a Department called the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office is not the point. The point is
that there can only be one British Government foreign policy,
and in every capital there can only be one voice that holds sway.
It can be the ambassador or someone else, but there can ultimately
be only one person who is responsible. We cannot have—and
this happens too often—two voices in the same capital.[118]
75. During Rt Hon Tony Blair's premiership, there
were criticisms that foreign policy was being run from the Prime
Minister's Office rather than the FCO. Since taking over as Prime
Minister, Gordon Brown has been seen to be marking a change in
direction, appointing a new Foreign Secretary as well as an "outsider",
former United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Lord Malloch Brown,
as Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, attending the Cabinet.
At the same time, the new Prime Minister has continued Tony Blair's
practice of appointing two foreign policy advisers, only one of
whom, Simon McDonald, is an official from the FCO. We asked Sir
Ivor whether he believed the FCO would be able to exert more control
over the direction of foreign policy under Mr Brown. He answered:
My gut feeling is that the new Prime Minister, at
this stage at least, wants to push work and policy back toward
the Foreign Office. That is certainly what the Foreign Office
feels, I think—that it is a welcome development, that it
will spend more time on foreign policy and that less foreign policy
will be decided inside No. 10. [119]
We invited Simon McDonald to appear before us, but
the Prime Minister's Office refused.
76. While
we welcome greater joined-up working between the FCO and other
Government Departments, we recommend that should be a clear recognition
across Whitehall, including from the Prime Minister's Office,
of the FCO's responsibilities for foreign policy and are disappointed
that Simon McDonald was unable to appear before us after his appointment
as special adviser to the new Prime Minister.
43 
