UK appoints head of merging foreign and aid departments
Sir Philip Barton has been appointed permanent under-secretary at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
Barton will head up the new department, which is to be formed next month after prime minister Boris Johnson announced in June that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Department for International Development (DfID) – which manages the UK’s overseas aid – would merge.
Barton, who is a career civil servant, will take up the role at the FCDO on 1 September. Foreign secretary Dominic Raab described him as “an outstanding public servant and diplomat with experience across all areas of foreign policy”, able to “bring together the talent and expertise” of both departments while helping combine “foreign and development policy in a way that is innovative, ambitious and more integrated than ever before”.
Cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, who is to stand down next month, added that he is confident that under Barton’s leadership, the new organisation “will strengthen the UK’s global leadership by aligning our development and diplomatic efforts to bring more coherence to our international presence”.
‘Quite extraordinary mistake’
The decision to merge the FCO and DfID is a controversial one. Supporters of the move argue it will enable the foreign office to build aid spending around the UK’s national interests, while the reform’s opponents argue that it will waste time and resources and dilute the impact of UK aid spending on reducing poverty. Former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell described the decision as a “quite extraordinary mistake”.
Soon after the announcement of the merger, the FCO’s permanent under-secretary Sir Simon McDonald announced that he is to step down “at the request” of the PM.
London to New Delhi and back again
Barton, who was appointed British high commissioner to India in February and took up the role last month, had been director general in the Cabinet Office working on the UK’s longer-term response to the COVID-19 crisis and previously spent three years as director general, consular and security, in the FCO.
He joined the FCO in 1986 and has been posted to New Delhi, Caracus, Cyprus, Gibraltar and Washington, where he was deputy ambassador. He was British high commissioner to Pakistan from 2014 to 2016.
He has served as private secretary to prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair, and was acting chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee from 2016 to 2017.
About Mia Hunt
Mia has been editor of globalgovernmentforum.com since 2019. She has 15 years’ experience as a journalist and editor and specialises in writing for civil and public servants worldwide, including covering sustainability policy and related issues. She has led the Global Government Women’s Network since it launched in 2023. Previously, she covered commercial property having been market reports and supplements editor at Property Week and deputy editor at Retail Destination. She graduated from Kingston University London with a first-class honours degree in journalism and was part of the team that produced The River newspaper, which won Publication of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards in 2010.
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