UNITED KINGDOM
A group of UK MPs is urging the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to pay more attention to the Commonwealth now that the country’s exit from the European Union (Brexit) is less than a year away.
The UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has called for a new Commonwealth strategy with the Commonwealth Summit taking place in London this week (16 April – 20 April).
The UK is assuming the Commonwealth Chair-in-Office until 2020 and MPs have called on the Foreign Office to set out clear aims for its tenure, including how it will support other Departments to feed into a new Commonwealth strategy.
The FCO was also told to clarify to the other 52 Commonwealth members — mostly former British territories — what they can expect from a post-Brexit “Global Britain” (an FCO slogan previously dismissed as a superficial rebranding exercise by the same Committee).
According to the report, Committee members are unconvinced Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson sees the Commonwealth as a “sufficiently high priority for Global Britain”.
The MPs warned that simply hosting the Summit was not enough, and the FCO needed to dedicate further resources to the Commonwealth.
Mr Johnson had told the MPs that the Foreign Office had secured funding for 250 additional staff to be deployed in its global network, with 10 new posts to open overseas.
The report argued that the Commonwealth should be prioritised in deploying these staff and new posts.
London, 6 April 2018
