Foreign Secretary David Cameron has threatened to withdraw Scottish Foreign Office support after First Minister Humza Yousaf met with the Turkish president without UK officials present.
Yousaf met with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at COP28 in Dubai to discuss the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Cameron – in a letter to the Scottish parliament’s constitution secretary Angus Robertson – claimed Yousaf breached protocol by meeting without a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) official without “sufficient advance notice”.
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He threatened to withdraw UK support for Scottish ministers overseas and to close Scottish offices in UK embassies, stating in the letter:
“Any further breaches of the protocol of ministerial meetings having a FCDO official present will result in no further FCDO facilitation of meetings or logistical support. We will also need to consider the presence of Scottish government offices in UK government posts.”
This comes after former Foreign Secretary James Cleverly made a similar threat after the First Minister met with the Icelandic President in August without the presence of a FCDO official.
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Scottish Secretary Alister Jack accused the Scottish government of over five breaches of protocol during COP28.
He said the Scottish government had given the FCDO “very last minute” notice of the meeting with Erdogan, claiming that Scottish officials had more advanced notice that the meeting had been rescheduled.
Currently, Scotland’s devolved powers do not include foreign policy and all ministers are required to have a UK official present at meetings with foreign officials.
Yousaf responded to the allegations made by the “unelected lord”, stating:
“For Lord Cameron to say he’s basically going to stop Scotland’s international engagement because of one meeting, where one FCDO official wasn’t able to attend – because, of course, at events like COP, diaries can change quite last minute – is really petty, really misguided.
“I suggest to Lord Cameron that next time, if he has an issue like that, he should just pick up the phone, I’m sure it can be resolved.”
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He also commented that he would have no problem with a FCDO official attending the meeting and that an official had been present at the “vast majority” of the meetings at the climate summit.
A Scottish government official added that “you can hardly say to a president, ‘Can you wait a second while we find our chaperone?'”
“Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking at the London Summit on Family Planning” by DFID – UK Department for International Development is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.