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

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, as a member of the committee, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for his chairmanship. It was a very enjoyable committee, which I felt privileged to be a member of, and much of that was down to his chairing. The number of noble Lords who are down to speak in the debate today is real testament to the work of the committee and the report, and to the importance of this topic. In a world that gives us so much confusion and anxiety today, it is important that we consider the challenges of how we are able to influence the rest of the world in a way that is beneficial to the citizens of this country. The balance of power around the world is shifting, and we therefore have to be much clearer about the sort of influence that we want, how we maintain it and, indeed, how we use it, now that less direct methods of influence are more and more important.

I was taken by the words of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about how we have to be clear about the vision for the country and take the British people with us. The willingness and ability to intervene militarily remains an important element of influence around the world, but it is not sufficient to defend the nation’s interests. There is not the time—nor, I suspect, is this the occasion—to examine our current anxiety regarding any military intervention, but that means that how we gain respect as a nation, and are attractive for investment for all sorts of other reasons, is ever more important. This means that we have to be more aware of how to both develop and communicate the attributes, values and successes of the UK. This is important for the UK population but also, of course, for people living in other parts of the world and for how they regard us.

We have a bit of a tradition of being, to put it mildly, sceptical about many institutions in this country. We sometimes say that it is a British trait. Healthy scepticism of the BBC seems to be okay, mainly, for politicians, but we recognised during the committee’s deliberations that that scepticism must be tempered with recognition that the BBC, with its World Service, is probably the most useful and effective soft power and foreign policy asset that we have, and that we trash it at our peril.

Our diversity is another real strength that was expressed by many witnesses who came to see us—the values that both uphold and come from a diverse population. Apart from anything else, that means that many communities around the world know about Britain through their friends or relatives. I remember that one of our strengths in promoting our bid for the Olympic Games was that we could say, “We will have someone from every country that is competing able to welcome every team that comes to our Olympics from around the world”.

We seem to recognise that diversity is a great asset—but, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, witness after witness talked about the real problem with our visa system and policy. It is not simply a policy issue; it is the impression that the policy leaves, and that the rhetoric around the policy leaves, with people around the world, that is very damaging to our influence and persuasion. In my view, the evidence that we had from Ministers on this was at best unconvincing.

We will all express our personal commitments today, will we not? One way in which our diversity and values are expressed is through those people who volunteer to work in the developing world. I have met Ministers and many other leaders who are happy to tell me that they were taught by VSO, they were looked after in hospital by VSO, VSO trained their local A&E staff, or whatever.

I was in Kenya with Voluntary Service Overseas during the recent Recess, and I met a group of 20 young African leaders who had been brought together from around the continent to Nairobi for a rights-based training course. They had all come together because of their involvement as team leaders in the International Citizen Service programme, which is a British Government programme which I suspect that most noble Lords have never heard of. It is hosted by VSO with about another 10 NGOs involved in delivery in 30 countries around the world. Young people from this country volunteer to go with people from the host country—national volunteers who move within their own country —to work on a development programme together.

Those young people were team leaders from the ICS programme. They were an absolute inspiration. Their commitment to using what they had learnt both in ICS and now in the training programme to change their community was inspirational. They asked me to make sure that the British Government understand how much different countries in Africa and the rest of the world are learning through the ICS programme. They said, “The Government are going to continue it, aren’t they?”. I had to say, “We don’t know yet”. Perhaps the Minister can reassure them and me that the Government will proceed with it.

The report has given lots of ideas for how we can move forward. Government have to get the balance right between supporting institutions and organisations, and controlling them. If they control them, as previous speakers said, that will undermine the whole effort. Soft power works only if it is not seen as the straightforward arm of government. However, there is much for government to do to ensure that the right infrastructure is there to support the security of this country and the well-being of its population. We cannot pretend that the rest of the world is not there. We cannot believe that we can live within this country and that nothing else will affect us. I hope that this report has given the Government and others ideas for activity, and that we will be able to strengthen the Government’s commitment to those institutions, values and organisations that will help enhance Britain’s role in the world in the coming years.

Voter Registration: Students

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a different question. However, as the noble Lord knows, I strongly support that and have worked to support it in government. I point out that young people are increasingly online. One of the things that government and local authorities are doing is to provide links to registration when you go into GOV.UK. For example, we have links for those inquiring about student jobs or paying tax, those looking for higher education courses who need to find and apply, those looking for tenancy deposit protection, a careers helpline for teenagers and so on to make registering to vote easier and to nudge people into thinking about it.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister realise that in many areas of the country his answers will seem very complacent? Much of the problem arises because for many young people it is the first time that they are registering. I will give another example, involving, admittedly, not a young person but my husband. Having moved, he was asked to go to the town hall with his passport to prove who he was before he was registered. Most people will never do that, and that is one of the reasons why individual registration is proving very taxing in some areas.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am extremely sorry to hear about the difficulties of the noble Baroness’s husband in having to demonstrate that he existed, and I look forward to hearing more offline. In the last two or three weeks, the number of people registering has risen considerably. Part of that has clearly been due to the extra publicity around National Voter Registration Day, and I give credit to those who organised it. However, all of us have to help in raising the level of interest. For example, I took part with candidates and spokesmen of other parties in a packed meeting at the University of York on Friday evening. Some students came up at the end and said, “We had not been thinking about voting so far, but now perhaps we will”. We all need to get out there to encourage young people.

Economic Leadership for Cities

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very timely debate. I welcome it enormously. I particularly welcome the fact that it comes from someone else from the north-east. The case for more economic opportunity for our cities is irrefutable. The intellectual case is there and has been made in different ways by people from different sides of the House already. I want to come at this in a very different way.

As many will know, I never represented a city in the other place. In fact, I live in a part of County Durham, which I think is an amazing place. I am very privileged to live there. I was born in Sunderland. We were always really proud that it was a bigger city than Newcastle. I say all of that because there are rivalries and issues around what we mean when we talk about cities here. We have to be very flexible around that. I want to talk about why we have not before now done what we have done and what that balance between the centre and the locality has to take account of in our country.

This debate is very important in the context of other important areas of debate in this country. One is the size and role of the state. There is a real argument to be had about that. The Chancellor has raised it; he is trying to tell us that he has not really raised it, but it is absolutely there: what sort of state do we want, where we do want power to lie and how are we going to develop that? We cannot sort that out today. I am a bit worried that the Government want to sort it out on the back of a fag packet before January, but there is a lot to think about and a lot to do about that.

The other issue is the one that we are being told will be sorted out on the back of a fag packet before January, which is devolution. Devolution is a huge challenge to us. It is a particularly huge challenge because we live in a very small country, where we see daily on our televisions and read in our newspapers what the world of the media thinks about what is going on in different places and comparing them. One of the great challenges for those of us who are committed to effective local government with new fundraising powers is what is described all the time as the postcode lottery rather than as an issue of democratic decision-making. I can tell noble Lords that that is what Governments run away from. When I was Local Government Minister between 1997 and 2001 we would agree to do a particular thing. For example, we agreed that the police would be given autonomy over how they spent their grant. The headlines after nine months were all about how many police were being taken off the beat. At the end of the year the Home Secretary said, “I’m going to ring-fence the money around numbers of policemen and not let them decide—they’re not going to spend it on policemen, they’re going to spend it on back-office stuff”. So we have the huge challenge of how we are seen as doing things. I do not see that as easy.

We live in a global world where the public have less and less confidence in what that global world means and how it affects their individual position and their community. They used to trust Governments and politicians to sort out for them what they needed, if you like, in order to live in their community in the way that they wanted to live. That trust has gone. We have to recreate the trust in different ways; we do, and local government does. Because we are a small country, we have problems in terms of the way in which the press and media report it. All the maiden speeches today, which I welcome, are from Liberal Democrat leaders who lost their seats after the election. That is the other thing that happens. When you get into Government, your local government base slowly starts to erode, and therefore the confidence of Government to give more powers to local government disappears as local government is then going to be running what they did.

I have lots more to say, but my time is up. We have to think of the broader things. Of course we want more economic power for local government, but how are we going to do it and how are we going to hold our nerve, particularly in devolving more financial powers?

Ebola

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, a close relative of mine works for Save the Children, which I note will take over the administration of the hospital that the UK Government are currently building in Sierra Leone. We have to understand just how difficult it is to cope in-country with what is going on. Sierra Leone has fewer than 200 doctors. Communications are not easy; there are several languages. We are upping what we do and encouraging others to raise their level of effort. The Germans have just promised to help with medical evacuation, for example, and we very much hope that they, like the Norwegians, will do a great deal more. We are working with others as fast as we can.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister recognises that this is not just a humanitarian crisis. These three countries in west Africa are all fragile states, and Sierra Leone, in particular, is emerging from conflict. It has now had several stable elections, but all of that will be under threat unless we get on top of the health crisis. We must recognise the support that will be needed financially for that country to re-establish the settlement between the population and the Government. Indeed, the last thing we would want is for Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to go back into conflict, civil war, and so on. The Government need to recognise that it is a security as well as a health issue.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we do recognise that. The last strategic defence and security review in 2010 marked international epidemics as one of the biggest problems that this country faces from elsewhere. We all recognise that the investment that this Government make by providing a large development budget is part of a contribution to our own security as well as the security of those other countries. Perhaps I might say that the pitch that we are currently making to the Germans is that Germany, like Norway, is a country with a fiscal and a trade surplus, so it ought to be able to make a very generous contribution to the broader issue of European security, which is threatened by epidemics spreading from fragile states, particularly in Africa.

Universal Credit

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not entirely sure what an open tube looks like but the DWP is of course working closely with HMRC. As noble Lords are well aware, the integration of HMRC systems with those of the DWP is an important part of this programme. We are all conscious that previous programmes, particularly on tax credits, have run into a very considerable number of problems about both underpayment and overpayment, and about underclaiming. It is intended that one of the great benefits of the universal credit system will be that a much higher percentage of claimants will claim and receive their entitlements.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

Will the Minister tell us whether the Government have published the consultants’ report on the feasibility of the IT project in the DWP and, if not, will they do so while the Committee is sitting in this House on the Bill?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, many noble Lords will be aware that the MPA starting gate report was passed to the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons and placed in the House of Commons Library. It was not specifically intended to be open for full publication, but one of the Members of the PAC passed it on to the Telegraph, which, I suspect, is part of the origin of this Question.