H.E. Bharat Joshi, British High Commissioner to Cameroon looks at recent budget cuts in Great Britain.

Recently, your Prime Minister announced cuts in Government spending to the tune of £81 billion from April 2011 to March 2015 to help reduce its budget deficit. This is clearly an austerity measure and must have left many people angry – especially those who say government should be spending more to stimulate the economy out of recession?

Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, have made it abundantly clear that the review is a necessary measure to redress the country’s biggest peacetime deficit in a way that is fair to our children, to promote economic growth and to reform the UK’s public service to become more accountable to the tax payer.  It would have been very unsustainable for the state to keep borrowing one pound for every four that it spends. This is a long term measure to turn the UK economy around as careful steps have been taken to promote reduced interest rates and cut taxes to stimulate investment. Government has maintained its spending on vital areas such as health, education and infrastructure – so it is not an austerity measure per se; it is common sense planning.

But the cut comes on the heels of a £6.1 billion reduction this financial year announced last June which has already affected FCO schemes like the Chevening Fellowships?

The decision taken by my country’s government in May was an urgent measure to begin to fix a structural deficit by eliminating waste and cancelling some capital projects. It set the pace for this longer-term review and was applauded by the IMF.  It was a tough decision to make and every department was called upon to contribute to the savings. The Foreign Office was asked to contribute £ 5.5 million to achieve this and the three-month long Chevening Fellowships for 2011 were cancelled among other measures. But Chevening Scholarships – which offer more value in terms of specialised training for Master’s level, have been maintained for most countries. As I speak to you, there are two Cameroonians who have started studying this academic year under joint schemes involving Chevening, Westminster and Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. We will continue to work out such opportunities to train young leaders from Cameroon and other developing countries.

In general terms, how will this review affect the way Britain’s diplomacy works?

Now, just like the budgetary savings made in June, each government department has been affected by the review. The Foreign Office will witness a 24% cut in its budget, which in real terms will be a 10% reduction by 2014. As a result, the Foreign Office is down-sizing  its staff, not through any draconian redundancy measures but mostly through natural wastage; that is to say, there will be a freeze on the recruitment of new staff in London as older staff go on retirement. Back office staff are being moved to play front line roles – so the reform is happening. This will make the Foreign Office concentrate even more neatly on its three essential goals: - using diplomacy to safeguard the UK’s security, to promote the UK’s prosperity and to help British nationals abroad.  We have already started pursuing these goals in Cameroon by engaging with government and the private sector to transform trade and investment links between our two countries, to help prevent conflict by supporting peace-building, governance and rights initiatives and by aligning with our EU partners to promote democracy.

But with the cuts in the budget of the foreign office, the UK may be compelled to spend less on development and bilateral aid to developing countries. How will that affect the UK’s bilateral support to Cameroon?

That’s an interesting question.  You will be pleased to know that in this whole arrangement, the UK will instead be increasing its spending on international support as part of its efforts to be fair to both British nationals and countries most in need of support. Our Official Development Assistance package in 2008 represented 0.43% of our GNI. But we have made the commitment to step that up to 0.7% of our GNI by 2013. This literally means development aid will go up instead! The Foreign Office and the Department for International Development will be responsible for administering these funds. It is therefore certain that we will continue to fund high impact projects in Cameroon.

Good to know.  So does this also mean that there will be more resources to increase the size of your mission in both physical and human-resource terms?

No. What is likely going to increase will be the funding we get for local projects that are in line with our objectives.  The reduction in the FCO’s budget by 24% means that there won’t be additional UK-based staff working for the Foreign Office at our High Commission here in Yaounde for the next five years. This will open up new opportunities for locally-engaged staff – most of whom are Cameroonians to get into more challenging positions with a good degree of responsibility.

In 2008, the British High Commission to Cameroon complained that it was no longer sustainable to operate visa services here; those services were moved to Ghana to cut cost. With this tougher financial climate for the Foreign Office, will the High Commission stay here in the long term?

There is a fundamental mistake people make about our visa services. I take this opportunity to insist that it is not the UK’s diplomatic missions that run visa operations – it is a specialised agency of the Home Office known as the UK Border Agency, UKBA. People clearly see this information when they apply for visas through the agency’s website. They collaborate with UK’s diplomatic missions abroad to ensure that those who qualify for the various categories of UK visas are given such permits to enter the UK. The High Commission is the arm of our Foreign Office here and is responsible for engaging with the Cameroonian government and society on UK-Cameroon relations. The High Commission has never moved from Cameroon. In fact, Cameroon is the privileged host of the UK’s diplomatic mission which is also responsible for relations with the rest of the CEMAC region, except Congo, which is looked after by the British Embassy in Kinshasa.  And there are no plans to move.

We understand that the spending review will also affect the British Council and the BBC. Does it mean these two bodies may disappear from our sight – the sight of Cameroonians?

No, BBC World and the British Council will not disappear because they are very important attributes of the UK’s leverage on international politics, business and culture. That’s why they have always had funding from Government through the Foreign Office. The BBC World will remain under the financial tutelage of the Foreign Office till 2014 when it will switch to funding from TV licence fees.  It is a matter of reorganising its funding stream. The Foreign Office has elected to reduce its financial donations to the British Council by 25% with the understanding that the Council has the capacity to raise funds from other sources. Here in Cameroon, the British Council has evolved to the stage where it is mostly carrying out high impact professional and language development projects.  Its Director Paul Norton made it clear to the press earlier this month that the Council was not closing down. Let me restate that reassurance to you now.

Would there be anything her Majesty’s Ambassador would like to add?

We are dealing with an unprecedented global economic crisis. The UK’s Spending Review has been designed to guarantee Britain’s prosperity in future, to help in the world-wide process of economic recovery and to continue to increase support to development in developing countries. I am proud that the UK will be the first country to meet the OECD commitment to spending 0.7% of GDP on international developmental assistance. The changes will be challenging for the Foreign Office, but equally they present an exciting new opportunity in how we manage our relations with Central Africa, including Cameroon. This will translate into more, not less engagement with Cameroon in the areas of trade and investment, as well as more partnerships on high impact projects that would make a difference to communities.