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The Foreign Office has been warned that a plan to axe its dedicated unit on emerging conflicts and refugee crises is a “real error” that “undermines UK security” as the department grapples with swingeing cuts.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) migration and conflict directorate, which employs about 100 civil servants, is being abolished at the end of this year and its work subsumed by the rest of the department.
The directorate provides advice and technical support to governments and civil society groups in trouble spots, including Syria, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen and the Philippines.
It is slated to close despite Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, writing last week that the FCDO was “stepping up efforts” to support peace-building.
The move is part of a wider restructuring that threatens 2,000 jobs – about a quarter of the workforce – and has damaged morale among diplomats.
During a select committee hearing in July, Oliver Robbins, the FCDO permanent secretary, told MPs his department was experiencing a real-terms budget cut and was affected by the decision to cut international aid spending to 0.3%.
Sarah Champion, the Labour chair of the international development committee, said: “We already know the UK’s aid cuts will be devastating, but FCDO will make the impact even worse if it removes expert teams in vital areas such as conflict prevention – before it’s even decided where the cuts will fall.”
Champion called for an immediate pause to the staffing cuts and restructure last week, saying that if ministers push ahead without proper planning “lives will be put at risk”, and prized FCDO expertise will be “lost for good”.
Alex Ballinger and Lord McConnell, the chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on conflict prevention, have written to Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser, urging a rethink of the decision to close the conflict directorate.
Ballinger, who is the Labour MP for Halesowen, said: “Conflict undermines the UK’s own security when it escalates and spills over borders, which means it would be a real error to lose the expertise this unit provides.
“Without it, the UK will be less equipped to reduce the enormous human suffering we are seeing in places like Sudan, leading to huge numbers of people fleeing to Europe. We’ll be less able to tackle conflict-driven disruption in places like the Red Sea, affecting prices on people’s grocery bills.”
McConnell, a former Scottish Labour leader, said: “The UK has played an important role supporting peace agreements, bringing an end to conflict between armed groups and central governments in Ethiopia and in the Philippines, for example, as well as enabling dialogue to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan and in other locations.
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“Conflict prevention and resolution must be an explicit goal of UK national security policy – and that will require dedicated funding and expertise for mediation support and peace-building work.”
The Public and Commercial Services union wrote to the FCDO earlier this month to lodge a dispute over a lack of consultation with the union about the staff cuts.
An FCDO spokesperson said: “The FCDO is going through a modernisation and restructuring process to ensure it is more agile, technically enabled, and focused on the UK’s key strategic priorities, including our core objectives to tackle illegal migration and prevent conflict.
“It is utter nonsense to suggest that changes to directorate structures mean those objectives will be downgraded; in fact, the exact opposite is true.
“Tackling illegal migration is one of our highest priorities and will in future be covered by its own directorate; while the prevention and resolution of conflict remain more critical to the department’s work than ever, with hundreds of staff in the UK and overseas striving to achieve peace in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan.”
