Commonwealth, Defence, TikTok, Taiwan
New entry restrictions and debates on defence
Hello,
Here are two questions for you.
Should the Government get in the habit of choosing someone from the House of Lords to be Foreign Secretary from now on?
Should the Government get in the habit of making former Prime Ministers Foreign Secretaries?
I’ve come to think the answer should be yes to both. That’s for three reasons.
First, the Foreign Secretary being in the Lords means they aren’t answerable to constituents in the same way a normal Member of Parliament is. That means they can travel for weeks at a time without needing to manage a constituency or cater to voters. That’s a good thing - the UK’s Foreign Secretary should be out in the world, conveying the country’s message and sending intel back home.
Second, the access a former Prime Minister-become-Foreign Secretary can get when compared to a normal MP-become-Foreign Secretary should not be looked over. Many governments match on reciprocity, and a former Prime Minister can get into meetings others cannot.
Third and finally, from the debates I’ve seen so far, the Lords scrutinise the Foreign Secretary in a far more interesting way than MPs typically do. Perhaps that reflects the length of time of the debates, the fact that Peers tend to have far more life experience outside of politics compared to many of the current crop of MPs, or that Cameron takes time to answer questions properly. But it is a marked difference and should be noted.
What do you think?
Also, this week’s report is lighter than most. That’s because, as The Financial Times has crunched here, politicians are spending just over seven hours a day tops in Parliament scrutinising legislation, shorter than at any time in the last quarter of a century. Less time means less Hansard for analysis.
- Sam Hogg, Editor
In this week’s briefing, we examine:
Defence in the Commons
The Commonwealth
TikTok
Diplomacy Tracker
Politics
Citing anonymous “people familiar with the matter”, Bloomberg revealed on Wednesday that the British Government was considering limiting the number of Chinese - and presumably other nationalities - people who could arrive in the United Kingdom under the rules that apply to “diplomats and others on so-called official service.” The piece was titled ‘UK Weighs Curbs on Chinese Official Visas Over Spy Risk.’ Given there’s a) no reason to doubt the veracity of this report, b) this is exactly the sort of thing that politicians pick up on and c) it’s likely to draw a response from the Chinese side, it’s worth digging deeper into what the Government appears to be thinking here.
As Charlie Parton noted in his comment to the piece, there is a clear discrepancy between how the UK and China issue and deeply these sorts of passports. “China lets a large number of people have a diplomatic or service passports, whereas in the UK diplomatic passports are very controlled and you have to hand them back when not on official business. On the one hand, a tightening of the visa regime could sour relations with Beijing, but on the other it could limit how many of its people coming to the UK can hoover up information we want to protect and pass it back to China.”
Bloomberg reports that the current options “include limiting how many people can arrive under diplomatic or similar rules, or restricting the scope of official or state-sponsored activities that don’t require a visa, subject to greater advance checks” and that, naturally, “the UK’s security agencies support tougher rules to mitigate risk.” At no point in the coverage is the reader given an idea how many people currently enter the UK using these channels, nor what the targetted reduction would be.
Obviously it’s not clear who leaked this information to Bloomberg, or why it was leaked now. Perhaps negotiations within the establishment have hit a bump, and they are hoping this will put pressure on parties blocking the idea to fold. Or perhaps an official is testing out an idea via the media to see what response it gets before pushing it further. It could also be none of the above. Either way, it speaks to the sloppy leaking culture in Westminster as a whole. Interestingly, BBC reporter Robin Brant added in a tweet “This was an area of questioning I put to [British Ambassador to China Caroline Wilson] in her first few weeks as Ambo back in autumn 2020. Particularly #china state employees entering on visas as ‘journalists’. [The US State Department] was reviewing and restricting it at the time. She was non plussed in her response.”