The future of UK foreign policy: Lord Charles Powell of Bayswater

The Coalition Government has been engaged in two separate exercises which affect the future of our defence and diplomacy. At least they should have been separate. The first was the comprehensive spending review to deal with the deficit amassed by the previous government, requiring severe cuts in public spending over the next few years. The second exercise was the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), whose task was to evaluate the role in the world which Britain should play in the future and well beyond the horizon of the spending review.