Experts warn that the Foreign Office will reduce almost 25% of its staff within four years. This could be a serious threat to Britain’s global prestige.
According to the Times, civil servants who work in the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office have received the bad news that the staff number will drop by 20% by 2025.
The FCDO faced a barrage of criticism over its handling of the evacuation of Afghanistan in August, exacerbated by junior mandarian Raphael Marshall’s extraordinary whistleblower testimony.
Mr Marshall warned soldiers had to be drafted in for desk work in the Foreign Office when colleagues insisted on putting their ‘work life balance’ first. Marshall also stated that thousands of plea emails had been opened and not responded to.
A planned merger between the Department for International Development and the FCDO is another source of frustration for civil servants. It has still not happened.
A former Foreign Office permanent secretary Lord Ricketts said that any reduction in personnel would lead to a decline in Britain’s international reputation. He also warned of the impact on Britain’s ‘foresight and capacity to anticipate problems’.
He added that “Further reductions in FCDO number now seem to be totally incompatible with rhetoric concerning Global Britain.”
News broke that 20 percent of the staff at the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Offices will be reduced by 2025. This has been devastating for civil servants. Pictured: Liz Truss, Foreign Secretary at the G7 summit held in Liverpool
FCDO civil servants received word that a voluntary retirement scheme would be available soon in order to reduce staffing by 20%. Pictured: A empty Whitehall in London
A voluntary redundancy plan will open soon for civil servants to cut down on staffing levels by 20%, according to officials.
Staff are already said to be grappling with low morale after the FCDO’s top mandarin Sir Philip Barton admitted there were ‘lessons to be learned’ from the bungled Afghanistan withdrawal.
This is on top of a flawed merger with Department for International Development. Employees fear that this will cause unequal pay, and even a culture clash, among teams.
For comment, the FCDO was contacted.
Lord Ricketts warned of the dire consequences of the drastic reduction in staff. He stated that Foreign Office positions were now “hollowed out with very few numbers to actually go out on the ground and do diplomacy and development work.”
Sir Paul Lever (ex-ambassador in Germany), echoed his comments to the Times, saying that Britain’s planned cutbacks would impact Britain’s “presence” and “performance” on the international stage.
He said: ‘You can’t absorb a cut of 20 per cent across the board in staff while continuing to do all the things you used to do… they won’t be able to maintain the same level of presence and performance.
“They will need to be more careful in deciding what priorities they should prioritize.”
Lever stated that more funds would be required to address the current cuts in training language skills for foreign-facing staff.
It is called Sir Philip Barton According to shocked MPs, he had stayed on holiday for 11 consecutive days after Kabul’s dramatic fall. He also admitted that there are still ‘lessons from Afghanistan.
Sir Philip Barton (left), who was speaking before an extraordinary committee, revealed that he had not returned from a two-week break until August 26th. This occurred nearly two weeks after government collapsed. The Taliban were given control. Tory Alicia Kearns and other MPs slammed him.
The top mandarin of the department revealed to an extraordinary committee that he had been on leave since August 9, and was not back until August 26, almost two weeks after the collapse of the government and the Taliban took control.
Although he refused to disclose where he was, he said it was somewhere in the UK. He also stated that he has put in cover and there is no way to predict the outcome of the crisis.
Sir Philip replied, “If I could have my time back I would have gone home from my leave earlier.” Infuriated MPs asked him when he booked the trip and why he could travel with Dominic Raab as well as the National Security Advisor and Head of the Home Office.
The £185,000-a-year mandarin – who has a pension worth £1.7m – said the evacuation from Kabul following the collapse of the government was ‘one of the most complex and challenging crises we’ve had to face’.
However, he acknowledged that it was not perfect and said he would have liked to see more people get out.
Sir Philip, his former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and senior colleagues are scrambling for a way to defend themselves against the damning testimony of a junior civil service who claimed that they sometimes had to deal with thousands emails from terrorists trying to escape the Taliban.