Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 8
Eighth Report - Tilting horizons: the Integrated Review and the Indo-Pacific
Published 30 Aug 2023
Paragraph 32
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Foreign Affairs Committee Implementing the Integrated Review: Tilt to the Indo-Pacific All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We welcome the acceptance in the Refresh of our recommendation that the Government work away from the word “tilt” to describe its policy towards the Indo-Pacific while continuing to prioritise the region. We also welcome the list of additional actions the Government proposes to take to implement its newly-described policy of making the 66 Tilting horizons: the Integrated Review and the Indo-Pacific Indo-Pacific region a permanent pillar of UK foreign policy. We recommend that these initiatives, and the overall policy shift they embody, be sustained in a consistent way over a long period and that they be clearly communicated both to our own population and to our partner countries, including those in the Indo-Pacific region.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, Eighth Report - Tilting horizons: the Integrated Review and the Indo-Pacific (HC 172), paragraph 32, 30 August 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 22 March 2024 (deadline 30 October 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's recognition of the Indo-Pacific's strategic importance and agrees on many points, but disagrees on a China Strategy, assessments of IPEF and RCEP, and the Committee's human rights criticisms.
- It agrees the Indo-Pacific must be a "long term and enduring aspect" of UK policy, but disagrees that it has not set out its long-term objectives clearly.
- On China, it disagrees with the recommendation to publish an unclassified China Strategy, stating it "does not intend to publish an additional China Strategy" while maintaining "as much transparency as possible".
- It "partially agrees" on funding and posts, citing doubled British High Commissions in the Pacific, and says CSSF funding "is adjusted annually" given the fiscal situation.
- It disagrees that it should publish assessments of IPEF while negotiations are ongoing or of RCEP, and says it does not "currently envisage" seeking to join RCEP.