The appointment of a top civil servant with deep experience in international development to a new senior post has been hailed as a significant but limited step in the U.K.’s attempts to rebuild its battered reputation on foreign aid delivery.
The merged Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, or FCDO, has been given a second permanent under-secretary — a deputy to its senior civil servant — with a brief to focus on development work and “undo damage,” as one expert put it.
The selection of Nick Dyer, a former acting head of the abolished Department for International Development, or DFID, is seen as a further victory for U.K. development minister Andrew Mitchell, who worked with Dyer at DFID more than a decade ago.