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

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, most profoundly for his magnificent chairmanship and his instigation of the Soft Power Committee, of which I had the honour to be a Member. It was a pleasure and privilege to work under the leadership of the noble Lord. He has served many major roles in different Governments of the United Kingdom and he brought them all together in a summation of this report, the way in which he conducted our meetings and the entirety of the soft power debate. All noble Lords will inevitably agree about the high value of soft power but few have spent time considering it in the way that the noble Lord has done recently.

It is no surprise that we are holding this debate the day after Commonwealth Day, the Commonwealth being one of the major institutions that came to the forefront of our debates and discussions and the taking of evidence in our Soft Power Committee. As Her Majesty the Queen said yesterday in referring to the Commonwealth, the organisation’s values were,

“more important and worthy of protection than perhaps at any other time in the Commonwealth’s existence”

It is important, therefore, to look at what those values are. They are the common values that we define as British values but they are commonplace throughout the Commonwealth countries. Tolerance is, perhaps, one of the most important. If you look up the findings of various tolerance surveys globally—and they are carried out all the time—you will find that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is at the forefront of being the most tolerant nation on the globe. That may seem surprising when we feel we have internal disputes within our society today; none the less, it is a fact. It is the Commonwealth of Nations which has promoted that tolerance. When you look at the statistics, you will find that other Commonwealth members share that same high level of tolerance, almost without exception.

For myself, I do not see that tolerance happens by chance. It comes because societies work hard to promote the fundamental freedoms—of which one of the most important is the freedom to worship. It is facing onslaught and assault in many different areas of the world, not least in the Middle East. You cannot promote the fundamental freedoms and expect them to survive and to be enhanced without the rule of law. As a former honorary member of the American Bar Association, I pay tribute to the way in which it works globally. Would that the British Bar associations did the same; alas they do not. I would urge them to do more.

I can announce that the AMAR international charitable foundation, which I chair, has received a major grant from the European Commission to promote religious tolerance in Iraq. If you can promote religious tolerance in today’s Iraq, I promise you can do it anywhere. Yet that little organisation has a track record of success in the promotion of the fundamental freedoms including, most profoundly, the freedom to worship.

As a politician, I have always focused on the need to have the right legislation in place in other areas of the world. In Romania, for example, we fought hard to bring in the correct children’s Act, which was based mainly on the UK Children Acts. In Russia, there was the terrific success story of outlawing human trafficking for the first time in their history. The doubters say that the rule of law means nothing; you put in a law but nobody implements it. That is not the case. The exciting thing is that, when you introduce the law, society starts to pay heed and to take it into account. It is certainly so in the places I have mentioned.

The rule of law inevitably depends on trained lawyers and that is why I suggest that the United Kingdom’s soft power has been of profound value globally and is, at this moment, under considerable threat. Take the Commonwealth scholarships fund. Last Saturday I was at Oxford University. I spoke with the law department and heard how it reaches an outstanding group of human rights lawyers from Africa and south Asia—the Commonwealth that would otherwise be impossible to reach. The professors told me that these scholars are bright, effective, brave people. They go back to prosecute war criminals in Kenya. They broadcast programmes on gay and lesbian rights in Uganda. Once trained in Oxford, these legal people address corruption and consumer protection in Nigeria and Ghana. Some are involved in refugee protection in Somalia. One of the former students is head of obstetrics in Lilongwe central hospital. I recall well visiting Lilongwe central hospital maternity ward some years ago. The very high degree of neonatal deaths accounts for the low level of life expectancy in Malawi. What could be better than having a fully trained obstetrician with legal knowledge there? Some of the students have developed a national human rights-based approach to primary education for disabled children in Uganda and beyond.

Without Commonwealth support, this sort of skill and knowledge development and the access that mature students gain to a worldwide network of human rights advocates would be lost to them. Their often weak institutions and the populations that they support would not gain the credibility and knowledge that the students bring back.

Today, the scholarships cover all costs, with the Commonwealth providing 60% of the funds for a master’s degree in international human rights law. All flights, reading material, accommodation, university and college fees are included. The design of the degree is unusual in that it is a part-time course spread over two years. I am supporting one student myself and I know how good it is. The course includes periods of traditional full-time study at Oxford during the summer combined with closely tutored online training which the student does from home or work. The degree helps mid-career professionals to extend their advocacy skills and knowledge of law while continuing with their human rights work at home. This means that students are able to use immediately what they have learnt in class. There is no brain drain from those nations and there is no immigration impact on Britain. Indeed, the Commonwealth Secretariat was one of the very first institutions providing education in the developing world to recognise the potential of the internet for advanced training.

The Government have recently undertaken a review into a range of government overseas scholarship programmes for international students which includes the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. The review was announced on 8 January by the Minister, the Member of Parliament for East Devon, in the following terms:

“The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development have recently commenced a review of the Government’s overseas scholarship schemes. It will build on the triennial reviews of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission and examine those schemes together with the Chevening scholarship programme to assess: Whether there is scope for further efficiencies and synergies across the schemes; If so, what alterations in structure, administration or delivery might realise those improvements? The extent to which efficiencies have already been put in place in recent years”.

While the scope of the review is limited to the Commonwealth, Chevening and Marshall schemes, the newly created BIS Newton Fund will also be considered in the process of evidence gathering. The Minister added:

“The outcome of the review will be published in March 2015”. —[Official Report, Common, 8/1/15; cols. 14-15WS.]

Noble Lords must therefore expect it to be concluded imminently and that Ministers will be expected to reach conclusions on those recommendations within the next two weeks. No one outside the review knows exactly what it will say, of course, but there are all kinds of possibilities, which is why I am raising this matter today.

One possibility is that the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, a well regarded and semi-independent non-departmental government body whose qualities I have just described and which has served the UK so well for the past 55 years in managing UK awards under the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan, may be recommended for closure. We should try at all costs to avoid a situation where in the dying hours of this Parliament Ministers announce a decision that is conveniently executive and which has been arrived at behind closed doors without proper parliamentary and public scrutiny. My two questions are as follows. When does the Minister expect the results of the review of HMG’s overseas scholarships schemes, announced in January, as I say, to be available, and will he confirm that no changes to the governance of these successful schemes will be agreed without full prior parliamentary consultation? Secondly, what provision has been made for public consultation as a part of this review? I believe that these schemes represent the soft power of the United Kingdom at its most effective, and I fear for its future if they are allowed to fall into oblivion.