Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, in asking your Lordships to take note of this report on power and persuasion in the modern world, I begin by thanking the excellent members of this committee, who worked tirelessly and showed great patience towards their chairman. I particularly thank the superb service we received from the clerks to the committee, particularly Susannah Street and Tristan Stubbs, our adviser Ben O’Loughlin and additional helpers. What they were able to do in terms of producing at rapid speed immense drafts covering immensely complex areas was quite remarkable. The whole committee is very grateful to them.

I also thank the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for replying to our report in a helpful document. It did not, of course, accept all our recommendations or agree with everything, but it clearly recognised the validity of a number of our themes. However, this report was not directed solely at the FCO, or even solely at the Government. It certainly concerned a range of departments and aimed its remarks wider than government altogether, because we are talking about both a governmental and national story. I also thank the witnesses who came before us—we had a great many—and those from all over the world who put in written evidence in enormous volumes.

Although it is a year since the report was published, it has, in a sense, improved with age—rather like a fine claret or a good cheese. Its relevance seems to have increased with time. We have seen in the past year how Vladimir Putin and the barbaric, so-called Islamic State can bend and abuse soft power and communications techniques in the digital age to persuade the world of their ugly aims, to misinform and recruit, and to terrify and outwit the West. We need to learn lessons from this. A sort of “cold peace”—not quite a cold war—has descended, which creates entirely new conditions to which we have to adjust. We can also learn from the billions of dollars being spent by many other nations in developing their soft power messaging nowadays—although some of this is, frankly, naked propaganda. One of the points emerging from our report is that propaganda, if that is what it becomes, loses all credibility. Persuasion through soft power is much more subtle.

This brings me to the first of four messages from the report that I should like to highlight. First, soft power is not an alternative to hard power. In the new global landscape, if we are to safeguard our national security and interests, and sustain our global influence, both soft power and hard power are needed. This point has not been grasped by some commentators. This mixture has been dubbed “smart power”, but it goes further than that. To defend ourselves, however well equipped are our Armed Forces, as they must be, we need to win the narrative as well. In the information age, with half the world on the world wide web and, apparently, more mobile telephones than human beings on the planet, this involves priorities and resources far outside the usual definitions of military spending. We now have to operate on new strategic frontiers, as the very eloquent director of Chatham House, Dr Robin Niblett, pointed out to us. We may not want any conflicts, but there are new tools of conflict that we have to be ready to use. In other words—as General Sir Graham Lamb shrewdly observed in this morning’s papers—while we need more expenditure to defend our nation, it needs to be of the right kind and we must be careful not to prepare to fight the last war under the totally new conditions that now exist.

Secondly, Britain has enormous assets of power and influence to operate in this completely changed environment, but we could use them much better. Britain is remarkably well regarded around the world, and our report gives a long list of our strengths. Our global reach and influence in terms of culture, creative industries, education, sports, health, services of every kind—particularly financial—legal procedures, accounting methods, scientific research and technical ingenuity is enormous, right across the planet. Our language carries its own internal DNA and attitudes across the planet, and across cyberspace. Our institutions are widely admired and copied, including the monarchy and Parliament itself, despite the rotten press that Parliament gets at home. Our instruments of communication and cultural diplomacy, notably the BBC World Service and the British Council, are highly effective and seen as models. Our scholarships and exchanges, though not nearly as extensive as some of us would like, are a powerful added attraction.

The BBC World Service, by the way, is reckoned to be the world’s most trusted news medium, even though it faces huge competition from digital media and other TV channels developing around the world, such as Al-Jazeera—and there are many others. Perhaps most of all, as power and wealth shift eastward, we in Britain are embedded in the institutions and structures of this new global network as few other countries are—we are very fortunate in that respect—notably through the 53-nation Commonwealth. I declare an interest as President of the Royal Commonwealth Society. Frankly, however, the committee was not entirely convinced that our policymakers have grasped the full value of the Commonwealth network in modern conditions, both in itself and as a gateway to the new great powers and markets such as China and Brazil. Nor am I satisfied. Only the other day, sweeping cuts were announced in UK contributions to key Commonwealth institutions. These were, luckily, swiftly reversed by a very understanding and efficient Secretary of State at DfID—but it is symptomatic all the same that that sort of thing could happen at all.

In the report we do not shy away from some negatives. Probably the less I say on our visa regime the better, because it always gets twisted. However, almost every one of our witnesses pointed to the negative aspects of the visa regime. There have been some improvements in the past year but it seems to cause bad feeling all round, clearly without having much impact on immigration totals, as we can see from the latest figures. I cannot for the life of me see why we should not at least try to have a Commonwealth business and tourist visa concession, to make things less difficult for genuine Commonwealth students, and perhaps even have a proper gateway at our airports for the 140 million subjects from Her Majesty the Queen’s realms when they visit us. Our attractiveness would be vastly enhanced if we made those sorts of improvements.

I come to my third message. We have all read commentators telling us that Britain has lost its way in this new hyperconnected world. A senior ex-diplomat said the other day that Britain is “without ambition or direction”. In truth, it is more that the commentators have lost their way—clinging to the 20th century view of Atlantic hegemony, superpowers and trading blocs when in fact the great new markets, growth, capital flows, influence and political power are shifting to the rising nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The UK, our report urges, must engage more actively with the networks of the future. It is in these huge new markets, and in parts of the world that are growing in power and influence, that the UK must re-establish its reputation. Given our Commonwealth connections and experience, this is a world in which Britain most definitely has a major role and is well placed to succeed and stay ahead in what Prime Minister calls “the global race”. That, of course, depends on the UK staying strong, confident and united at home and within.

I would add in brackets—this is a personal observation —that I greatly regret that your Lordships still have no proper international committee to bring to bear the House's collective wisdom and wide knowledge of these very fast-changing new patterns of international relations and trade. I think that this is a real omission.

Our report offers a long list of to-do recommendations to government—and not only to government—about how to adapt to these new global conditions. I will not tire noble Lords with a full catalogue, as they can read about them in the report, but we emphasise that in this changed world embassies, far from becoming less important, as the futurologists used to tell us, are becoming more crucial in protecting our interests and promoting our British story. Therefore, resources should be added to, if possible, and distributed in that direction.

We argue that the main departments of state concerned with projecting the British case and narrative to the world should co-ordinate more—that is, mainly DfID, the FCO, the Ministry of Defence and the DCMS, although many other departments have an overseas face. This is one of the remarkable changes: that every department of state in a sense also has a face outwards to the rest of the world. We suggested that they should review closely how well they have got on together in Afghanistan over this past decade. There is a long list of other recommendations, which I shall skip but which I am sure will come up in the debate.

Our fourth message is that to be effective, and safe, the United Kingdom needs to widen its diplomacy and understand that it is dealing with empowered and e-enabled publics everywhere and in every country. This is a completely new development in this hyperconnected world. Perhaps I may put it in the words of the former German ambassador here, Wolfgang Ischinger. He describes it very succinctly and reflects what we say in our report. He reminds us in the Foreign Affairs magazine that has just come out that,

“new technologies have already fundamentally changed the practice of diplomacy and statesmanship. Today’s diplomats must be prepared to speak to a global audience and to constantly contend with an international media circus. They must be both hard-nosed negotiators and global communicators”.

He goes on:

“Most notably … cyber attacks and hybrid warfare”—

in which, of course, we are deeply involved at present—

“have demonstrated that cyberspace has already become a battlefield on which familiar concepts such as deterrence and even defense need to be defined anew”.

In the end, as I think our report indicates, it all comes down to building relationships of long-term trust with nations large and small around the globe, and developing a mutual respect and attractiveness. It takes a lot of patience but, if we can build up our soft power relations in all their varieties and forms, then in the hours of crisis, which are bound to come, that is what will guarantee co-operation and support in winning our struggles and preserving our safety and prosperity.

The established world order has now unravelled. The strategic imperatives of a transformed global order demand that the United Kingdom becomes the best networked state in the world and that we use all our persuasive powers to full effect. That is the key message of our report—and, if it makes a marginal contribution to the big changes of government, of policy and of mindset which we now desperately need to survive and prosper in this puzzling and dangerous new world, it will have been worth while. I beg to move.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, as the debate gets under way, I remind noble Lords that there is an advisory speaking time of nine minutes, and that when the digital clock shows nine, their time has elapsed.