A former head of the United Kingdom Foreign Office says the Government must delay its defence and foreign policy review that began at the beginning of the year.
The review is currently scheduled to be published, alongside a comprehensive spending review, in the middle of the year, but Lord Peter Ricketts (pictured), who oversaw a similar review in 2010, said this was now impossible in the light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“It’s a very big and detailed and important strategic review, and it can’t be completed between now and July, in my view,” Lord Ricketts said.
He said a more realistic time frame would be early next year.
“It seems to me that the Government is going to be doing nothing but this crisis until the mid-year, and so it would be sensible to give itself another six to nine months,” Lord Ricketts said.
“It is also unlikely the Government will be able to carry out a full spending review by this summer, given the Civil Service’s stretched capacity during the pandemic.”
He also said the Government would need to request an extension to the transition period for leaving the European Union fairly soon, as it would be impossible to complete all the negotiations needed to define the UK’s future relationship with the EU by 31 December.
“I’m absolutely clear that it needs to be delayed. I don’t see how in the current extreme crisis we’re in that we can possibly find the bandwidth to negotiate these extremely detailed, difficult, controversial agreements on future relationship, there’s no way we can do it,” Lord Ricketts said.
“I know it’s difficult for the Government to accept, but since half the negotiators on both sides seem to already have the virus and now Ministers as well, it feels to me it’s the time fairly soon to just accept that it should be delayed, say for another year.”
London, 31 March 2020
