British Council: Funding

Lord Bach Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Lord Bach]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their policy towards the future funding and future expansion of the British Council.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, it is an honour to be opening this debate today. I am delighted that, after not a little difficulty and with the gratefully received help of the government Chief Whip, we have managed to secure this debate before the long Recess. I only hope that all the other noble Lords who are to speak in this debate agree with that. I am delighted at the quality of the speakers who have been good enough to stay late on a Thursday evening to speak in this debate, particularly the Minister, to whom I am grateful for answering this Question.

I declare my interest as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the British Council, a position that I am delighted to hold, not just because in my view the British Council is one of our country’s greatest institutions, a jewel in our crown, but also because many years ago I grew up as a British Council child. My father, having left the Army at the end of the war, joined up and had a distinguished and happy career with the council both at home and abroad, working with such council legends as Dame Nancy Parkinson and Sir Paul Sinker. Abroad he served in Madras, now Chennai, and Tehran, and at home in Glasgow, Oxford and, as a senior officer, in the famous Home Division. I was proud of him then, and I am proud of him now, in the same way as I am proud of the 7,000 people in 191 offices in 100 countries around the world who do such extraordinary things for our country, and who, in order to do that job, sometimes have to put themselves in physical danger. All noble Lords will remember the incident in Kabul last August, when lives were lost. Thankfully, no British Council lives were lost, but lives were lost, and these were people who had put themselves in harm’s way for our sake. Public service is not always properly respected in this country, particularly at the present time. I hope that this debate will reinforce this House’s high regard for those who serve in public service.

It is worth reminding ourselves of the mission set out in the British Council’s royal charter, first to,

“promote cultural relationships and the understanding of different cultures between people and peoples of the United Kingdom and other countries”;

secondly to,

“promote a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom”;

thirdly to,

“develop a wider knowledge of the English language”;

fourthly to,

“encourage cultural, scientific, technological and other educational cooperation between the United Kingdom and other countries”;

and fifthly to,

“otherwise promote the advancement of education”.

It is not as though life has ever been easy for the British Council. Anyone who has read about the long, drawn out beginning of the council itself, way back in 1934, will know that, if it had not been for the persistence and will power shown by some, particularly Sir Reginald Leeper and Lord Lloyd, the council might never have come into existence. The French and the Germans in particular had years of experience of cultural diplomacy, stretching back to the second half of the 19th century. Now, nearly 80 years after the British Council’s foundation, I believe that those great countries sometimes envy its success and influence in performing its soft power role of cultural diplomacy.

Having survived the enmity over many years of Lord Beaverbrook and other powerful forces, the constant internal departmental battles within Whitehall and innumerable reviews and reports, some of them recommending summary execution, the British Council has emerged alive and flourishing as it nears its 80th anniversary. Of course, other obstacles have emerged, some of them serious, but the British Council has learnt to adapt. It was born in an age of empire and has successfully moved into an age of proudly independent countries, many in the Commonwealth, many outside. For example, it has learnt to engage well with the development agenda, which it does to great effect. By way of brief example, the programme run for DfID to strengthen civil society in Burma—a crucial programme —was evaluated as “outstanding”, and the British Council has won a £12.8 million contract to deliver the second phase of that project.

However, the British Council remains true to its core purposes: the English language, education and the arts. The main obstacle, as I rather feebly described it, is the question of money, or rather, the lack of it. The 2010 spending review settlement—often described by that rather overused word, “challenging”—entailed a 26% real-terms reduction in the British Council’s grant in aid from £185 million to £154 million by 2014-15. As the Foreign Affairs Committee of another place has said, that has put the British Council’s budget under “great strain”, and,

“may well trigger some fundamental rethinking of the role and work of the Council”.

The settlement was indeed severe, and it is much to the credit of both the chief executive, Martin Davidson, and—if I may say so without unduly embarrassing him—the previous chairman of the British Council, my noble friend Lord Kinnock, that difficult economic times were anticipated, and a decision made to expand greatly the amount of what is described as earned income in relation to grant in aid.

This has been done successfully so that, by 2015, only one pound in five that the council receives will be from grant in aid. We should commend this achievement but, at the same time, it is vital to sound a warning voice. The British Council is a public body; it belongs to all of us; it represents our country very successfully around the world. In my view, therefore, the present chairman, Sir Vernon Ellis, is surely right when he says in his introduction to the annual report for 2011-12, published earlier this week, that,

“the grant element in our funding remains vital … Further cuts in our core grant would make it more difficult to align our priorities with the interests of the UK”.

Without that grant in aid, how will it be possible for the British Council to do its vital work in countries where there is very little or no earned income to be had?

I hope that the message will come loud and clear from this debate that enough is enough. All Governments —and this Government, I am afraid, in particular—are guilty of not always seeing the treasures before their very eyes. There is an official blindness to what is palpably obvious to everyone else. There are some services and institutions that make Britain a more civilised and more respected country. A failure to support those services and institutions sufficiently by government demeans us both in our own eyes and in those of the world beyond. This Government have had to face issues of this kind a number of times. On one, the forests of this country, they backed away; on another, to which I am almost embarrassed to draw reference, legal aid, they did not and they took it on. That is an excellent example of how short-sighted Governments can be. I urge the Minister and the Government not to make the same mistake that they made in abolishing legal aid for social welfare law, in a very different context.

The British Council is a great institution and, as I have said, a jewel in our crown. It is incumbent on any Government, and this one at the present time, to protect it, to cherish it and to ensure that it continues to serve our country well.