Interview: Richard Ottaway

If all the world’s a stage, then Richard Ottaway is in the front row. As the frontman of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, he has arguably the largest remit of any select committee chair: the entire globe. Ottaway is charged with examining British foreign policy and the activities of our diplomats at home and overseas, scrutinising everything from espionage to efficiency savings. As your correspondent takes him on a whistle-stop tour of the government’s global operations, the interview swoops through three continents before landing back in Westminster again.

We start our journey in China: specifically, the bustling, industrial metropolis of Chongqing. Ottaway has questions about the death there of a British citizen, Neil Heywood – an influential individual with close links to the recently purged Communist Party chief, Bo Xilai.

Heywood reportedly helped the Bo family earn large sums of money from corporations operating in the city, earning his cut for helping transfer the money into foreign bank accounts. Snippets in Chinese state-owned newspapers suggest that Heywood was poisoned by Xilai’s wife because of an “economic dispute”. Meanwhile, the UK press has worked itself into a frenzy over whether Heywood had ties to MI6.

“There’s been a lot of froth put on this because, frankly, it’s a pretty intriguing story, but the Foreign Office isn’t the guardian of these people, and it seems to me they’ve behaved perfectly properly throughout,” comments Ottaway. Nonetheless, he wants some answers from the FCO, and has written an open letter to find out more. First, he wants to know when the rumours that Heywood had been murdered were communicated to ministers. Second, he wants details of the procedure for alerting ministers to the deaths of British citizens abroad, and how Heywood fitted in to that system. And third, he wants clarity on Heywood’s connection to the British government, and what kind of information he was reporting back to the local consulate.

“I think the skeleton of an explanation is there, and I don’t think there’s been anything misleading said. However, we’d like to see a bit more flesh on the bones,” he says. But how strong does he think the UK can be in demanding answers from the Chinese? “It’s quite important in the Heywood case not to get too carried away. This was a British citizen who was working in China who was allegedly murdered,” he replies, emphasising the importance of fostering a strong relationship with the rapidly-growing world power. “China is someone we can do business with, they’re not a threat to us,” he adds. “There will be glitches, we remain concerned about their human rights record, but I’m pleased the relationship we have with China is good.”

So what does he think is the best way to approach human rights violations in the country? “We must keep the pressure on human rights,” he says, but “I’m not one of those who thinks trade should be conditional on human rights. There are an awful lot of countries in the world we wouldn’t be doing any trade with if that was the case.” Ottaway wants to “use the opportunities that we have whilst we’re trading with them to keep pressing our concerns,” but he warns against “pushing this business too far about human rights for trade. How would we feel if people said: ‘We don’t like the way police kettle protestors in the UK, and we are going to cut our trade unless you change your policy?’ ‘A’, we’d ignore it; and ‘B’, we’d get pretty cross.”

Aid then trade
Ottaway clearly favours the carrot over the stick, and also supports increasing Britain’s international aid budget – even though the Department for International Development’s (DfID’s) rise has to some extent eclipsed the power of the Foreign Office. “The brave decision by David Cameron to stick to his election pledge and be the first country to get to 0.7 per cent of GDP in aid does raise eyebrows in certain quarters of the political world,” he says, “but I think the long-term benefits to Britain will be immeasurable.” Why? “Because they will appreciate that, when they were in a mess, Britain came and helped them out.”

Britain gives millions of pounds in aid to India, and some of Ottaway’s Tory colleagues have complained that the country nonetheless intends to buy $10bn worth of fighter jets from France. “Perhaps India has moved away from Britain’s sphere of influence, or is moving away from Britain,” he says. “If they’re buying French aeroplanes, it doesn’t look good, does it?”

We move on from the Indian subcontinent and into dusty, desolate Afghanistan. The country is very much in our sphere of influence because of our military presence there – but what does he think we will leave behind? “I think we will leave some support behind, I hope we can get most of our hardware out,” he says. Yes, but what is Afghanistan going to look like? “I like to think we’re going to leave it with a functioning democracy and security services that can maintain law and order. Given that it was an utterly lawless state, which hosted [the] international terrorism that caused the biggest atrocity ever in the western world, I’d like to think we’d leave a country where that would never happen again.”

If we’re negotiating with the Taliban, how confident can we be that it will remain a functioning democracy? “It’s a functioning democracy now.” But we’re in there spending an awful lot of money to ensure that! “The government believes, and I think they’re right, that we’re leaving an army there three times the size of the British Army to keep out the Taliban. There will be fighting, the Taliban will have a go, but I remain confident that the Afghan forces will be able to cope.”

European ties
We’re on the move again, this time to Brussels. Much of Britain’s foreign policy isn’t unilateral, but instead conducted with partners – particularly the Europe Union. Does Ottaway think that there is scope to work more closely with Europe on foreign policy? “Yes, we can. I don’t have any trouble with the European External Action Service [the EU’s equivalent of the FCO] because there are some things that can be promoted around the globe by Europe rather than by Britain individually.”

The boss of Europe’s diplomatic service is the much-maligned Baroness Ashton. Is she the right person to be leading European foreign policy? “I read all the bad publicity that she had and I’ve met her on two or three occasions, and when she appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee a couple of months ago, in all honesty, we were pretty impressed. She had all the answers at her fingertips; she made it perfectly clear that she didn’t lobby for the job, she found herself pushed into it; she was doing it to the best of her ability; and frankly, I wish her well in what is a nightmare job.”

The problem Ashton faces is that European countries take a very long time to agree on anything. “Look at [military intervention in] Libya, it took an awful long time for the EU to come together on that. You had Germany sulking, France for it, and everyone else somewhere in between. How does Europe’s foreign representative present that lot to the rest of the world?”

Ottaway defines himself as someone who was “brought up in a pretty positive European environment,” but he sees this government as “the most eurosceptic we’ve had since we joined the European Union.” Their approach will therefore cause him some discomfort, and he suspects it’s difficult for some FCO officials to stomach too. However, as someone who witnessed a Tory government torn asunder over Europe under John Major’s premiership, he’s keen for the government to follow the dynamic of the House of Commons – even when that means hostility to Europe.

Brazil and beyond
If you’ve just got used to being in a European time zone, apologies, we’re off again – this time to South America. The FCO is shifting the focus of its efforts to work more with less-established but rapidly-growing economies, seeking stronger relations and increased trade – and it’s building new embassies and outposts to do so.

Ottaway highlights Brazil, a place he visited recently, as a good example of the FCO’s ambitious approach. “They’ve really upped their game there, and with their discovery of oil [at sea], we are a prime country to help them with all our skills from the North Sea,” he says. “We’ve got the technical skills, the manufacturing skills, the City of London has the financial skills, and with Rio De Janeiro getting the 2016 Olympics… they’re pretty darn impressed” with what the UK has to offer, he adds.

Further, British efforts in Brazil aren’t confined to those of the FCO – it’s a cross-departmental affair, and Ottaway is himself impressed by the ability of civil servants to collaborate. “When we were in the embassy, it was actually a mini-Whitehall dumped there in Brasilia, and quite right too,” he says. “We had properly equipped buildings and offices, with people in them who had all the skills to work on Brazilian concerns for the benefit of the UK, and that is what I call good management and joined-up government.”

However, he does have one concern: the government’s target to double trade by 2015, which he thinks “does feel a bit ‘back of the fag packet’”. The targets are arbitrary, he says, and there’s no strategy for how the UK will achieve them. They don’t even specify that the aim is to increase exports, he adds: we could hit the target by increasing imports.

People skills
Ottaway thinks Simon Fraser, FCO permanent secretary, is well-placed to boost British trade. “His last job was as permanent secretary of [the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills] and he’s the first [FCO] permanent secretary never to have been an ambassador – he’s had a trade job and a commercial job [within the civil service], which sends a pretty clear sign to the younger ranks in the Foreign Office that taking a commercial job overseas is no barrier to getting to the top,” he comments.

Fraser isn’t the only official that Ottaway has kind words for. Ottaway sits on the National Security Council, and this has allowed him to observe Sir Kim Darroch, Britain’s national security adviser, up close. “[Darroch]’s new but he’s showing an awareness and understanding of the complexities of the job,” he says.

Darroch has only been in post since January; how does Ottaway think he compares to the previous national security adviser, Sir Peter Ricketts? Ottaway initially says he doesn’t want to comment, but then butts into my next question, saying that “it’s worth pointing out that Peter Ricketts is certainly of a generation which is reaching the end of their careers in Whitehall, because they’re getting older. Kim Darroch represents a new generation coming into the top jobs.”

Do those generations have different approaches? “They are inevitably bound to reflect the generation that they’ve grown up with. Here’s me in my sixties, I didn’t start using a keyboard until I was in my fifties. When I first entered the wider world, the internet was 25 years away and homosexuality was illegal.” The current government is liberal in his mindset, he says, and this new generation of top civil servants are well-suited to delivering its policies.

Local obstacles
The new generation of diplomats may not be able to reach their full potential, however. Spending cuts are creating fewer opportunities for them to spend time overseas and learn important lessons, Ottaway thinks.

“A senior diplomat is a very valuable asset to Britain because he [or she] has spent a lifetime being trained, learning languages, learning skills of political analysis, diplomatic skills, communication skills, and that doesn’t come overnight.” However, spending cuts mean that “there’s an increasing reliance on locally-recruited staff, because they’re a lot cheaper.” The opportunities for UK staff must remain, he warns; and while Britain can get away with increased reliance on local staff for the remainder of this Parliament, he fears that doing so for any longer would have knock-on consequences for the FCO’s skills and capabilities in the long term.

Furthermore, the FCO isn’t best utilising its existing skills base, he thinks. Buckle up, because we’re heading to Turkey: “When we were in [the Turkish capital] Ankara, we discovered that there are 28 Turkish linguists in the Foreign Office, but only one of them is currently in Ankara,” he says. “You’ve got to use your skills to best effect.”

Scrutiny and criticism
Just two weeks ago, Mr Ottaway’s committee published its annual report on the FCO’s finances, airing fears about the impact of spending cuts. He admits that, overall, the FCO has suffered fewer cuts than other departments, but is still concerned that not all of its spending targets are achievable.

In particular, he is concerned about whether the department can meet its target of £60m asset sales a year. Last year, it only sold £29m of property, but its target is to selling £240m-worth in four years. To hit that sum, the department must sell properties three times the value of those already sold – and the committee believes that doing so would cause serious harm to the FCO’s overseas network. The committee will therefore be keeping a close eye on these savings, and following up in further reports if the situation doesn’t improve.

We’re back in Westminster now, ambling down Parliament’s committee corridors. Ottaway thinks his committee has an “improved” relationship with the FCO, and likes “to think they know we’re pleased to work with them.”

That “good rapport” between the select committee and the FCO has only been tested once so far, when the department cut its funding for the BBC World Service. The committee was critical of this decision, especially because it meant the BBC Arabic service would be scrapped just as the Arab Spring began. Ottaway says the department was dismissive of his complaints; but Parliament showed its teeth, scheduling a motion asking the government to reconsider. His committee won, and consequently the Arabic, Hindi and Somali services will remain open, while DfID has announced increased funding for the World Service Trust. “That to me is how a select committee should work,” Ottaway says.

The committee may make its next stand on human rights, he says, if Bahrain isn’t added to the FCO’s list of countries of concern. Other issues that particularly interest the committee include arms control and the future of the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile, Ottaway himself is clearly enjoying his job. He’s the first elected chair of the committee, and feels empowered by his mandate. Two government ministers have told him they’d rather have his job than their own, he reports.

He’s given us a whistle-stop tour; and if all the world’s a stage, the chair of the Foreign Affairs committee is sitting in the best seat in the House. Ottaway and his team of critics are primed to write review after review after review.