Soft Power and Conflict Prevention

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the most reverend Primate for initiating this debate, and I greatly admired the way in which he opened our deliberations. I also thank the committee and its distinguished chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for the report, which is extremely timely.

The interdependence of the world that we live in is becoming increasingly clear. This country is taking measures to deal with violence, and violence stimulated from abroad. We are spending money on that. The interconnection of world powers is becoming increasingly clear to every citizen, and I believe that the citizenry of this country would welcome a review, initiated by the Government, of soft power and the persuasion of others to avoid violence. We need positive plans. If in the next year we are considering defence and security, this is an extremely important part of it.

Recently, this House had the honour and advantage of hearing from the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Jan Eliasson, who has had very great experience in the United Nations. He talked to us about the fact that the UN should not now be solely occupied by the member nations but that it should recognise that there are cross-boundary concerns, beliefs and objections which should be taken into consideration in planning for world peace.

It is a good thing that 0.7% of our GDP is being made permanent. I hope that this country will grow in such a way that it could even exceed that, but it is a notable achievement and it is not one that the public object to.

I want to come back, eventually, to the points made by the Deputy Secretary-General, but others have spoken about the value of the Commonwealth, and that institution could do even more than it does at present. The two British institutions that are particularly directed towards extending to other countries our understanding of the values that we need to put in place to avoid violence and our rich culture are the British Council and the BBC World Service. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, spoke well and forcefully of the pressures that are felt by the British Council and I will not go into them in great depth. But it is a marvellous organisation, which at one point was led by the deputy secretary of the department in which I served as a junior Minister. I learnt a great deal from him.

We really need to give serious attention to the BBC World Service. The budget rose in April of this year by £6.5 million to £245 million, but in 2010, the Foreign Office cut BBC World Service funding by 16%, leading to the departure of about one-fifth of its staff. The licence fee might prove a more stable source of funding than the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but the licence fee itself will come under consideration by the Government. It has to be underpinned at a distinctly higher level. Again, I believe that the British citizenry would accept that and understand that part of the money is to underpin our society.

In 2005, the BBC provided services in 43 languages. Today that figure is down to 28. I recognise that English is becoming a world language, but we should be targeting people who do not necessarily speak English. Of the languages that are spoken, a television service operates for the Arabic and Persian languages, with a smaller service on IPTV—television via the internet—for the Russian language. A radio service exists for 18 other language services. In contrast, Chinese state journalists broadcast in more than 60 languages.

The audience for the World Service grew in 2013 thanks to its Arabic and Persian TV stations. It has adapted to growing competition by creating more programming for local partners to air, and its audience online, although small, is picking up. This is vitally important.

The global audience estimate measures the combined reach of the BBC’s international services—the BBC World Service, BBC World News, BBC.com/news and BBC Media Action—across the world. Russia has recently shown the biggest growth for a single market, with the audience more than doubling to 6.9 million weekly, as people turn to the BBC for trustworthy and impartial news. The BBC’s Ukrainian service also reflects this trend, with its audience more than tripling to more than 600,000 over the past year. BBC World News TV shows an increase of 5 million viewers, taking its weekly audience to 76 million. The Indian audience has grown and shows signs of recovering from the past few years of decline. This comes thanks to investments in digital and TV for the Hindi service, including the launch of the “Global India” programme on TV, which brings in 6 million weekly viewers, and an increase in World News viewers.

Before I conclude, I want to say that Governments are not the only people who should be expressing and supporting soft power. We recently saw a very important visit by the Pope to Turkey where he issued a joint statement, along with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, which showed an awareness of the ecumenical nature of religion. They said:

“We express our common concern for the current situation in Iraq, Syria and the whole Middle East. We are united in the desire for peace and stability and in the will to promote the resolution of conflicts through dialogue and reconciliation … The grave challenges facing the world in the present situation require the solidarity of all people of good will, and so we also recognize the importance of promoting a constructive dialogue with Islam based on mutual respect and friendship”.

I am delighted to hear that, because the Abrahamic religions should be speaking out together against the appalling violence and calamities that we have seen in Iraq and Syria. There was a convention in Abu Dhabi on 14 September in which a response was issued by the Islamic people’s scholars and imams entitled This is Not the Path to Paradise. It was a long declaration that was inadequately noticed. It contained a verse from the Koran saying:

“When he is empowered, he sets out to do violence in the land, destroying crops and livestock. But God does not love violence”.

Further on there is another quotation from the Prophet Muhammad:

“Beware (or Woe unto you)! Listen! Do not revert back to disbelief after I have gone”—

that is by,

“some of you killing others”.

We need a coming together of religions to voice their common message in favour of peace and kindness to mankind.