Resignation of UK Ambassador to USA

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the resignation of the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

It was with deep regret that, yesterday, the Government accepted the resignation of Her Majesty’s ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch. Over a distinguished 42-year career, Sir Kim has served his country with the utmost dedication and distinction. He brought dispassionate insight and directness to his role. It is an outrage that a selection of his very professional reports back to London should have been leaked.

Quite rightly, Sir Kim received the full support of the Prime Minister and the entire Cabinet. In an act of selfless duty, Sir Kim made the decision to resign in order to relieve the pressure on his family and colleagues and to protect the UK-US relationship. The Government profoundly regret that this episode has led Sir Kim to decide to resign. The tributes that have been paid to him from across both Houses, which I would add to, and from so many other corners of this country and others, have been fitting and rightly deserved.

Before we open to general questioning, may I thank the Minister of State for that pithy but very gracious statement? Many people in the Chamber will have had personal interaction with Sir Kim. He is an outstanding public servant, a point that has been beautifully encapsulated by the Minister of State. I call Liz McInnes. [Interruption.] I do apologise—Mr McFadden.

I thank the Minister for his opening statement. The resignation of Sir Kim Darroch marks a dark moment for our democracy and for the standing of the United Kingdom. He is a hugely respected professional diplomat with an exemplary record of serving both Labour and Conservative Governments. In writing his dispatches, he did nothing wrong. He was doing his job. It is his job to tell it as he sees it. He carried out his duties in the finest traditions of the civil service. These traditions are not just rusty relics from the past; they are essential to the proper workings of our parliamentary democracy. His response has been characterised by dignity and professionalism, which is more than can be said for others in this affair.

Any other President would have brushed this off and seen the importance of the bigger picture, but the response that we got was the opposite of mature leadership. Thankfully, the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States is bigger than this matter and bigger than this President. The response of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) was an appalling abandonment of someone in the firing line. Real leaders protect their people; they do not throw them to the wolves because they can sniff a prize for themselves. His actions were a chilling warning of what is to come if he becomes Prime Minister.

How can those in the civil service be expected to do their jobs properly now? How can they operate if they fear leaks, followed by abandonment by our political leaders? What are our ambassadors supposed to write home, from whatever country they are in—“The President is perfect. The people are happy. They sing his name in the street”? What use would that be from our postings abroad? How can civil servants advise Ministers at home if they feel that candid advice will be taken as evidence of disloyalty and treachery?

Those who welcome Kim Darroch’s departure believe that we need a civil service of true believers. They are profoundly wrong. We do not need a civil service of true believers; we need a civil service able to do its job without fear or favour, and that has become much harder this week. Does the Minister share the concern that this attack on the civil service is part of a broader attack on institutions essential to the functioning of our democracy—judges called enemies of the people; MPs called traitors to their country; broadcasters vilified as having hidden agendas?

My apologies to the right hon. Gentleman, whose question it was my privilege to select.

The right hon. Gentleman has spoken with authority and wisdom. What he said should be pinned on every wall as an instruction to people on how to act, respectively, in public life and about public life. I commend him for what he has just said.

We have emphasised throughout the importance of ambassadors being able to provide honest, unvarnished assessments of the politics in their country, and to be able to report without fear or favour. We will continue to support civil servants in carrying out that duty. On Tuesday and again today, I have been very grateful to those on the Opposition Benches for the support and cross-party unity they have shown. Their decency, with all those across the whole country who support officials when they are under attack, is something for which I personally am very grateful. When I spoke to Sir Kim yesterday, he was too. He asked me to pass on to the entire House his gratitude.

The right hon. Gentleman is right about the decay in our institutions. We can have a ferocious contest across the Floor of the House, but we have to do that under certain rules and certain codes of conduct—being able to say hello in the bar afterwards, having expressed our differences. So many codes of conduct are in freefall. It is leading, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly says, to unacceptable attacks on judges, Members of Parliament and broadcasters. Attacks of that sort are a fundamental attack on all the basic freedoms within the democracy in which we operate.

While the failure of the former Foreign Secretary to leap to the defence of Sir Kim shows a lack of leadership that is lamentable, is not the priority now to restore the shattered confidence of our diplomatic corps? Is not the best way to do that to identify the miserable perpetrator of this act and then to see them charged with a criminal offence?

I hope the House will understand if I hold back today from making any further comment on my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson). I said enough yesterday to make my position entirely clear.

In terms of the confidence we need to have in our officials and their morale, the permanent under-secretary in the Foreign Office, Sir Simon McDonald, had an all-staff meeting yesterday, which included people who were able to come in on phones and by video conference. The mood was palpable. There is deep upset, but a fantastic united defence of Sir Kim Darroch. I think and I hope that the very, very deft manner in which the PUS handled that meeting will have absolutely reassured our diplomats and officials everywhere that they have our full support. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the leaking. I really hope that we find who did this, and that their name and the consequences of what they did become very, very clear indeed.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) on securing it. He spoke for almost the whole House, and certainly everyone in the country, as indeed did the Minister in his response, in expressing his dismay about the circumstances that have led to the resignation of Sir Kim Darroch—who has had to resign, let us remember, simply for doing his job and telling the truth about what is happening in Washington.

While Sir Kim is entirely innocent and can leave office with his head held high, there are many guilty parties in this affair who should be hanging their heads in shame. First, there is whoever is responsible for leaking the memos. Then there is Donald Trump, and his ridiculous temper tantrums. Then there is the outgoing Prime Minister, who has indulged Donald Trump so much but received nothing but disrespect in return.

For me, however, the biggest villain of all is the man who is about to become our Prime Minister. He had the chance on Tuesday night—not just once, but six times—to defend Sir Kim and oppose Donald Trump, but instead he made an active choice to throw our man in Washington under the bus. It was the most craven and despicable act of cowardice that I have seen from any candidate for public office, let alone someone running to be Prime Minister. It sends the worst possible signal to our diplomatic service abroad, and it should send warning signs to our whole country—if we thought that the current Prime Minister was bad when it came to her spineless attitude towards Donald Trump, then things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Will the Minister therefore ensure that a new ambassador to the US is appointed before the next Prime Minister takes office, so that we still have at least one UK representative willing to speak truth to power in Washington?

I am grateful to the hon. Lady—at least for her kind words about me. I do feel obliged to defend my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I think that in these difficult times the relationship between the Prime Minister and the President has obviously seen us disagreeing on some things, such as the Iran nuclear deal, so it is inevitable that that relationship has needed a lot of work. But I do not think that my right hon. Friend has been spineless; indeed, I think that she has been very skilful. She has done her utmost, with a high degree of success, to ensure that the relationship has been functioning in the best possible way. The next ambassador will be appointed in the usual way: by the Prime Minister, on the Foreign Secretary’s recommendation, with the approval of Her Majesty the Queen.

May I first welcome the comments of my friend the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and my right hon. Friend the Minister? This has been a very difficult moment for British diplomacy, and it is worth thinking about why that is so.

This is a direct challenge to a sovereign nation and its ability to nominate its own representative. If sovereignty does not allow a nation to choose its own representative, frankly, what is it but servitude? That is why Britain must stand up for our envoys. If we do not think that they are up to it, we must replace them, but we must not be bullied into seeing them kicked out or silenced. May I therefore ask my right hon. Friend to assure me, and everyone in this House, that Her Majesty’s Government will always stand up for those we send abroad, military or civilian, and back them as necessary, in the interests of the British people and no one else?

I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said consistently over the past few days. I thank him for his response and his support, and for that of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which he chairs. I am also grateful for his kind words about the permanent under-secretary when, at short notice, he appeared before his Committee yesterday as a witness about these leaks. The permanent under-secretary very much appreciated that the Committee was able to appreciate what he said to it in that session.

Yes—we appoint ambassadors. Nobody else does. They are Her Majesty’s ambassadors and nobody else’s. We will also stand up for them, and I can tell from what has been said by Members on the other side of the House that if ever there were a Government of a different colour, that Government—I hope—would too. It appears that they would.

I thank the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) not only for securing the urgent question but for his remarks, which I think reflected the views of many of us in this House. I also thank the Minister for his strong remarks over the past few hours, and the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee for his remarks. They have put some members of their own party to shame over these past few hours. I also want to thank Simon McDonald. The letters he exchanged with Kim Darroch show a dignity that is lacking in some members of the Conservative party.

It is so important that ambassadors and other officials know that they have our support and that of their colleagues. I hope—and I hope that the Minister will give us a fuller answer on this than he gave the Labour spokesperson—that we will have a speedy replacement, because the role of ambassador to the United States is a key one. The civil service system has been damaged; they must be able to speak truth to power.

I think that it is a disgrace that a member of the Conservative party, who sits on the Minister’s own Benches, said that we do not need to defend diplomats when they are doing their jobs. What is the Minister’s message about that? Good governance relies on candour. People from all parties might not like that sometimes, and might hear things we do not like, but it goes to the heart of what makes good government for everyone.

The Shadow Minister was right to say that the former Foreign Secretary threw the former ambassador under the bus. President Trump cannot be held to account by this House for his actions and his words, unfortunately. Others can. Time and again the former Foreign Secretary has shown that he is unfit for office. Does the Minister agree with me that he should never be allowed to hold the role of Prime Minister?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bowling me such easy balls and I will endeavour to answer as frankly as I can. He will forgive me if I do not commit to a timescale, simply because I do not know: I am not in a position to inform the House with authority. I would merely observe that if one makes a speedy appointment, it is very likely that one would create a vacancy elsewhere, so what is solved in one corner of the world becomes a gap in another. It is very important that we appoint a new ambassador in the proper way so that we get the very best person appointed in the best possible way for the long-term interests of the UK and our relationship with the US.

Where I can totally agree with the hon. Gentleman is in saying that it is everyone’s duty—and that of everyone in this House—to defend our ambassadors. They are our ambassadors doing their duty. If they do something terribly wrong and break all the rules, that is altogether different, but Sir Kim Darroch was, as the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) said from the Labour Front Bench, doing his job and appears to have been punished, as it were, for doing so. We must defend every ambassador who is properly doing their job. We will and we should. As for his final question, I hope that the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) will allow me to defer that a little.

A leak is, by its very nature, a conspiracy. Who benefits?

There are those who break all the rules of decency who think they can benefit from it themselves. Quite who is benefiting from this, I cannot see, but what is quite clear is that the interests of the country do not benefit. This is an absolutely unacceptable leak that has had a very significant consequence that is detrimental to our interest as a country and of course, in an utterly unfair way, to the personal life of a highly capable ambassador and his family.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) on securing this important urgent question and on the manner in which he put it, and I thank the Minister for his remarks. Sir Kim Darroch was and is a distinguished and principled man who has given huge service to our country, and we must all thank him.

Does the Minister understand the deep concern about the fact that the man who is about to be our Prime Minister repeatedly refused to back Sir Kim and the civil service? That concern is not only about the implications for this case and for our diplomatic service more generally, but about the implications of our potentially having a Prime Minister who will be pushed about on all sorts of issues by the bully that is President Trump. I agree with the Minister that that is the behaviour of an utter wimp.

I seem to recall that that was one of the kinder words that I used yesterday. [Laughter.]

There is one thing that I have omitted to say today, which I hope I can say now in response to the hon. Lady’s comments. Sir Kim Darroch’s career is not over. I hope the House will recognise that although this is a difficult moment, it does not mean that that is the end of his career, and I hope that the Foreign Office and the entire apparatus of government will look after him, appreciate his merits, and ensure that he can be redeployed somewhere else for the benefit of our United Kingdom.

As for the hon. Lady’s somewhat more party political questions, again, I think I would prefer to concentrate on the specific details of the question put by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), and to concentrate on the merits of Sir Kim Darroch rather than the—merits of anyone else.