The former army officer was elected chair last July, just two years after becoming an MP, and has so far made it abundantly clear he has no time for any attempts by Boris Johnson to duck scrutiny.

Does he think Johnson is an effective foreign secretary? “One of the things I notice is that the Foreign Office seems to have somewhat lost its way – and certainly there is a failure of leadership from the top, I don’t question that – but there’s also a cultural issue,” he says.

“This is an organisation that at one point conducted British overseas strategy for however many hundred countries … but now it doesn’t do Europe, it doesn’t do trade, it doesn’t do aid.

“If one runs through the things that the Foreign Office now no longer does, one wonders why it can’t focus its efforts on the areas it still does.”

It is one of a number of quietly stinging remarks Tugendhat makes throughout the interview. In measured language, the 44-year-old goes on to call into question the way the government has conducted Brexit, demands the Foreign Office do more on Syria, and says Britain has failed to stand up to Iran.

His committee is expected to publish a report shortly, criticising the Foreign Office for the UK losing its seat on the International Court of Justice, the UN’s most powerful court, for the first time since it was set up in 1946.

Tugendhat says this is a failure of multinational diplomacy that is “very serious” and a “real blow to the Foreign Office”.

In another swipe at Johnson, he says: “The culture of all organisations starts at the top. When I was a soldier – and I’ve noticed the same thing now as a member of Parliament – when you visit a unit, whether it’s a ship, air base, barracks, school, hospital, you can often tell very quickly whether it’s well run. And that comes from the top.”