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Heads of Geographical Depts
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FROM: P J BACON, PARLIAMENTARY RELATIONS
DATE: 14 JUNE 1985
cc: PS
PS/Mr Renton
PS/PUS
Mr Barrington
Mr Sprague, Protocol Dept Planning Staff Information Dept
CCD
UNIT
OVERSEAS VISITS BY THE SPEAKER AND IPU DELEGATIONS
1.
The attached letter from the Secretary to the Speaker seeks FCO advice about a visit to Tunisia (which NENAD are considering) and the Speaker's overseas visits programme more generally. I shall recommend to PS/PUS that Mr Sprague (Protocol Dept) and I should call on Mr Beaumont, to whom I have already spoken, with a view to providing co-ordinated FCO advice about the countries or areas which the Speaker might usefully visit.
2. The Speaker attends two or three international Speaker's Conferences a year. He is also willing to undertake one major visit during each summer recess, possibly to more than one country, plus two shorter visits during other recesses. He has his own travel budget, although I understand that COI pay costs other than air fares for the reciprocal inward visits. He can only visit countries which have the eqivalent of a Speaker and he likes to give priority to the Commonwealth. Within these constraints he is anxious to visit where it will do the most good for Britain. He is concerned about the rather haphazard and responsive way in which his programme is currently arranged and wishes to establish a better system for assessing priorities and planning and stimulating more useful invitations. He attaches importance to an FCO input into this process. Speaker told the PUS last year that he was extremely keen to be helpful to the FCO. The PUS minuted subsequently that we should respond quickly and imaginately to any suggestions from the Speaker and the Secretary of State agreed strongly.
The
3. The IPU overseas visits programme seems also to be organised somewhat indiscriminately. In addition to their six-monthly annual Conferences, the British Group of the IPU undertake five or six outward visits each year to IPU member countries, a list of which is attached. Their 1985 programme includes Bulgaria, GDR, Egypt, France and Somalia. They have no system for assessing priorities on the basis of the importance to the UK of the country they are visiting nor for balancing the political and geographical spread. Invitations tend rather to be issued and accepted as a result
/of
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