Government Departments: Soft Power

Baroness Taylor of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

To call attention to the level of co-ordination between Government departments on the use of soft power in the interests of the United Kingdom; and to move for papers.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

My Lords, the two debates today might almost have been merged into one because they cover very similar ground. I look forward to the contributions that are going to be made, and I know that many noble Lords have had a long-term interest in this area. I must mention, although I do not think it is particularly relevant today, my interest as a patron of the Africa Educational Trust and that I am a member of the advisory board of Thales UK.

We could spend the whole of this debate trying to define the term “soft power”, and many academics do exactly that. I noticed that Joseph Nye will be speaking in the Commons next month, so I will leave it to the academics to hold the theoretical discussions and concentrate today on what I think is important. I want to talk about the use of all the avenues of influence that add up to soft power, and I was interested to note that at Question Time today, the Minister, when talking about NATO and the EU, said that peace was also about stability and shared values. His comments were, I believe, very relevant to the theme of this debate. I also wanted the House to have the opportunity to discuss the use of soft power, in particular the need for government co-ordination in this area, partly because of my experience in government and because of my concern that the comprehensive spending review might lead to rather short-sighted cuts that might have long-term consequences for Britain’s influence in the world.

Many people will immediately think of the British Council, the BBC World Service and of the importance of overseas students in this respect, and I will mention those issues later as, I am sure, will many others. But I want to start my comments by referring back to the Green Paper produced by the last Government entitled Adaptability and Partnership—Issues for the Strategic Defence Review. It was written by the Ministry of Defence, but crucially in close consultation with the Foreign Office and DfID. One of the themes of that Green Paper was “understanding and anticipating”. That theme is very relevant, especially at a time when domestic security cannot be separated from international security, and the pace and nature of the changing threats we face are increasingly challenging.

In the section dealing with defence diplomacy and security co-operation, the Green Paper acknowledged that defence investment in the range of activities that we know as defence diplomacy is modest. That may be something of an understatement. These activities—contributing to conflict prevention, capacity building, training, advice on security sector reform—can all play a significant part both in understanding the nature of emerging threats and in helping other countries to co-operate with us in tackling them. Yet we spend less than 0.5 per cent of the defence budget in this area, although I think it could legitimately be questioned whether all that spending should come from just the defence budget.

Some significant steps were taken by the previous Government. The Foreign Office established a strategic communications and public diplomacy board, and I would be interested in any progress on that. We also saw a very important step in the establishment of the stabilisation unit, which brought together not only funding from the Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office and DfID but personnel from these three very different departments, enabling them to work together in one unit. A visitor to the unit would not be able to identify the home department of those working there, which is a very significant step forward. As I understand it, there will soon be a stabilisation strategy which we all look forward to.

That work was very good and those steps were significant—they did represent progress. However, I am not convinced that there is a total buy-in from everyone in all the departments nor that everything is quite as joined up throughout the piece as it perhaps should be. That is why I would urge Ministers to take a very active and personal interest in ensuring departmental co-operation. Moreover, I fear that when it comes to squeezing budgets, it is often the areas of small spend that become the easy targets. It is easy to think that if the spend is low, then so must be the contribution. That is simply not the case with soft power. During my time at the MoD I saw increasing pressure—which I am glad to say was sometimes resisted—to squeeze things such as defence diplomacy, training budgets and so on.

Perhaps I may disabuse anyone who thinks that this area simply involves defence attachés going to cocktail parties. I am glad to have the support of my noble friend Lord Boateng in this, as he will know from personal experience that that is not a true image. I put on record the fact that almost all the defence attachés whom I met were modern, focused and well respected in their host countries for the practical help that they gave on issues such as stabilisation, security sector reform, training and, very importantly, establishing democratic accountability of the armed forces in those countries. I would also emphasise the need for co-operation between government departments. I do not think that every embassy achieves the same level of integration and effort or that every embassy works as much as a team as it should. There is some scope for improvement there.

Of course, I came across some specific problems when I was a Minister. As I mentioned in the debate initiated last November by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I believe that those who work in the field of aid and development are sometimes too apprehensive about working with colleagues in military uniforms. I have a particular example in mind where the only way to get aid delivered was to improve security on the ground, which in itself required in-country security-sector reform. Although that could be delivered only with the help of our military advisers, the local DfID official was totally opposed to any military presence.

I think that some advances have been made, and I was particularly pleased when the DfID White Paper was published some 18 months or more ago. As it pointed out, unless you have stability and security on the ground, it is often impossible to provide the necessary aid. I do not want to exaggerate the problems, but ensuring a joined-up approach is definitely an area where ministerial leadership is important.

Perhaps I may get the Minister’s reaction to the fact that the United States has for the first time published what should become a quadrennial diplomacy and development review which oversees all the various contributions made by the State Department and others responsible for aid. Although I do not think that we should copy everything the Americans do, I also wonder whether we should not consider having our own version of such an overview of all these activities to ensure that we get the maximum impact from all of them.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, many other areas are important in respect of using soft power to extend our influence. I am sure that others will mention the BBC World Service. I have long been a firm admirer of the work that it has achieved. Yesterday I received a letter—I am sure that others have received it as well—from Peter Horrocks at the BBC. In respect of the World Service, he writes:

“We know that our content has been enthusiastically consumed by audiences in the Arab world in recent months. Our online audiences have gone up by 300%, makeshift projection systems showing BBC Arabic TV have been erected by protestors in the capital cities of various Middle Eastern countries, and our radio broadcasts have been relied on when TV or online has been disrupted. But in just a month’s time, we will need to cut back dramatically on our services as a result of the funding reductions”.

This is a very serious situation and I must ask the Minister for specific assurances that he will look at it. This is a critical time for that region and clearly the work that the World Service is doing is very important indeed. Quite frankly, I do not care whether the money comes from the Foreign Office, DfID or anyone else. We need clarity on the role of the World Service and certainty about its future. Recent events have highlighted its value yet again, but it cannot fulfil its potential if it is going to stagger from funding crisis to funding crisis. I hope that Ministers will not close their minds to looking at this issue again.

Nor can the British Council stagger from crisis to crisis. It has made a fantastic contribution to the world’s understanding of Britain and the promotion of our culture and heritage. Yet it, too, is facing very severe and real cuts which will undermine much of the reputation it has established. I am sure that many people in this House also share my concerns about the future of overseas students, whose presence here has brought this country many benefits once they have returned home.

In addition to co-operation between government departments here, there is one other point that I want to raise with the Minister—the scope for co-operation with other countries in the field of soft power. We all agree that prevention is better than cure and that should be the first objective. We have long acknowledged the need to co-operate on hard power through institutions such as NATO. But it is important to remember that, as in Afghanistan, you cannot win by hard power alone. No one would say that soft power is a substitute for hard power; we need both, and we all need to recognise that. However, I should like to ask the Minister about co-operation with other countries in this area. Many allies are reconsidering their level of diplomatic presence and military representation with a view to closing posts. We could end up with a situation where many allies are pulling out of the same country and leaving a vacuum in terms of understanding what is happening there. That might be unwise and could be dangerous.

I would also like to know from the Minister the extent to which there have been meaningful discussions, and how near we are to getting conclusions, on the role of the European External Action Service and our contribution to it. What are the Government’s thoughts on the progress here? Are we linking our work on this to a proper assessment of what we should be doing collectively and what we must continue to do by ourselves? When the Prime Minister launched the national security strategy he said that it is about how we project power and influence in a rapidly changing world. To do that, I hope that Ministers are fully sighted of all the work that increases the influence of this country in the world. The challenges that we face are daunting. I think that it is crucial that we use all the influence for good that we can and that soft power must be a mainstream part of government considerations, not just in defence and the Foreign Office but throughout government as a whole.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

My Lords, very briefly, I want to thank the Minister for his response and for the information he gave us to show that the Government are taking this issue seriously. I want also to thank all those who took part in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said that we would not get the headlines tomorrow. I think we can live with that because one of the purposes of the debate was to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the influence that this country can have and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said earlier, should have and should not be worried about putting forward in the future. Sometimes our history pulls us back on this and we should not be inhibited.

The debate has demonstrated the very wide range of topics that are covered here. The noble Lords, Lord Hall and Lord Smith, both gave us very good examples of the cultural and artistic dimensions and I will remember the phrase that the British Council provided that “bubble of oxygen” as well as the example the noble Lord, Lord Smith, gave us of the response of the Chinese.

We had mention of the contribution of overseas students. We could have spent more time on that, but time is always limited. I think that we enjoyed the entertaining reflections of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, on his time in the Foreign Office, which gave an insight. He mentioned the possibility of revisiting the issue of whether the Foreign Office and DfID should be split. I might be one of those who would also be interested in revisiting that question, because I am not sure that we have always got the balance of responsibilities right.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for reminding us so bluntly of the pressure on resources and some of the difficulties, for example, of the scholarship programmes, which have been so valuable in the past. I must admire my noble friend Lord Soley for getting in a mention of football before I could, which is unusual to say the least. He also reminded us that soft power is very significant in stabilisation and transition phases. We will have to give more attention to that in future.

Strong pleas, led by my noble friend Lord Fowler and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, were made throughout the debate for the BBC World Service. We understand some of the constraints on what the Minister could perhaps say this afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said that no one would blame the Government for not foreseeing the situation that has now arisen in the Arab world. Many of these decisions were taken before those events. As many noble Lords have said today, it is important that the Government think again. I heard what the Minister said about the possibility of there being some difficulties with using DfID money, but I hope that those can be explored further because where there is a will, there is a way. The significance of the contribution of the BBC World Service, particularly at this moment, is so enormous that the Government will have to revisit the matter in some way.

The noble Lord, Lord Smith, said that soft power was underemphasised and underappreciated, and that we needed leadership. I think that it has been appreciated and understood. The Minister said that the debate was timely because of the work that is going on within government. I hope that the contributions today have helped him reinforce the message that soft power is important and requires co-ordination throughout government as well as with other institutions. I thank all those who have taken part in the debate. I seek leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.