Foreign Secretary
Hague's appointment as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs was Prime Minister David Cameron's first. He was also appointed to the honorary position of First Secretary of State. In his first overseas visit as Foreign Secretary, Hague met with United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, D.C.
In August 2010, Hague set out a values based foreign policy. He said that "We cannot have a foreign policy without a conscience. Foreign policy is domestic policy written large. The values we live by at home do not stop at our shores. Human rights are not the only issue that informs the making of foreign policy, but they are indivisible from it, not least because the consequences of foreign policy failure are human".
Hague said that "There will be no downgrading of human rights under this government and no resiling from our commitments to aid and development" he said. He continued saying that "Indeed I intend to improve and strengthen our human rights work. It is not in our character as a nation to have a foreign policy without a conscience, and neither is it in our interests." However, in March 2011, Hague was criticized for increasing financial aid to Pakistan despite persecution of its Christian minority. Cardinal Keith O'Brien stated, "To increase aid to the Pakistan government when religious freedom is not upheld and those who speak up for religious freedom are gunned down is tantamount to an anti-Christian foreign policy."
In September 2011, Hague told BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 investigation Cyber Spies into the legality of domestic cyber surveillance and the export of this technology from the UK to countries with questionable human rights records that the UK had a strong export licence system. The programme also obtained confirmation from the UK's Department for Business Innovation and Skills that cyber surveillance products that break, as opposed to create, encryption do not require export licences.
In June 2012 Hague stood in for Cameron at PMQ's when both Cameron and Deputy PM Nick Clegg were out of the country
Read more about this topic: William Hague
Famous quotes containing the words foreign and/or secretary:
“I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it should be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it in every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America is known to everyone who has given the matter attention.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the boss’s moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.”
—Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)