A scathing internal report into what is described as an often hierarchical, amateurish and under informed British diplomatic service has been issued by the Foreign Office.

The report finds that British diplomats are hampered by slow, clunky technology, poor language skills and a culture averse to risk in which too many managers proliferate.

The report says that staff “need to be liberated from process and hierarchy, in order to provide the bold and creative foreign policy advice that FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] ministers and No 10 crave”.

The report was commissioned by the Foreign Office from the former British ambassador to Lebanon and senior Downing Street official Tom Fletcher. It represents a wake-up call for a department struggling to assert its authority in Whitehall and overseas.

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