13:00 Mr. Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)

“budget constraints have led to staff redundancies, cuts to travel and training, and reduced programme funding including our work on counterterrorism and climate change.”

Such is the incoherence that the cuts are eating into the new priorities established by the Foreign Secretary himself. In January 2008, he rewrote the FCO’s strategic priorities, identifying four new policy priorities on which the FCO would focus. Three of those priorities were counter-terrorism, conflict prevention and climate change—the very programmes that have been cut.

“we will be increasing substantially the overall level of resources the FCO puts into counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation; climate change; Afghanistan and other conflict regions…All these areas will receive additional staff and money.” —[ Official Report , 23 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 53WS.]

[Source]