Lesser-taught languages

Debate between Daniel Kawczynski and Nick de Bois

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois]

My hon. Friend rightly makes a suggestion that I will be reinforcing to the Minister a little later. He is right. The Government’s job, and our job, is to lead. I know from questions I have tabled to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education that they would rightly echo the sentiments he has expressed and which I am sure others in the Chamber hold regarding the value and importance of these qualifications. With a new Parliament, perhaps we can put some oomph—that will be an interesting one for Hansard—into backing up what we aspire to deliver.

As is evident today, there are cross-party calls, led by the all-party group on modern languages, for the political commitment to which my hon. Friend has referred. I think it is also a political commitment to transforming the reputation of the UK as essentially poor linguists. I was blessed in that my father was in the Royal Air Force, so I lived and travelled in many locations overseas. I found it quite hard to learn a modern language overseas. For many years we were in Holland, and as the Dutch told me, “We are all learning English because no one is really keen to learn Dutch.” I am not sure that that is necessarily the case now, but because we were English, we were inherently gifted by the fact that so many people wanted to learn English. That is not the way of the world now—in an ever-changing world and an ever-changing global market. I do not want Britain to be seen as a country that is reluctant to value languages other than English.

The all-party parliamentary group rightly set out other important aims—for example, to ensure that every child achieves a high-quality language qualification by the end of their secondary education. Indeed, that is an ambition that other countries do not need themselves, as many of them are on the way to achieving it. I think it right for exam boards to seek to review their policy, which is in my opinion short-termist and taken in isolation of the needs of business and in isolation of the wider UK skills level training for the future.

As the APPG rightly recognises, the commitment to, and the status of, modern languages are strategically important, yet this move, along with the wider concerns about the take-up of modern languages, make our position more vulnerable now and for the future. As the UK becomes more diverse, with a growing diaspora from many different countries, we should not lose sight of the unique opportunity to build closer cultural, diplomatic and business relationships with countries of origin.

Let me explain. In Enfield North, I have a very mixed population, with strong, well-established second and third generations of Turkish-speaking communities, Greek Cypriot communities, south-east Asian and Polish communities, to name but a few. Indeed, it was interesting to find out from my research that Polish is the second most commonly spoken language in the UK. This is not a reason, in my opinion, to abandon the A-level, but a case to ensure that we encourage the second and third-generation Polish people to become the entrepreneurs, academics and diplomats for the UK and to ensure that we help Poland to do more business with the UK. That is surely the role of modern languages—to secure the qualification, to get it recognised as a qualification that is utterly distinct from what people might learn in the home and to allow people to use languages to progress and develop the careers they need. If I sound as if I know what I am talking about at all, it is down to the discussions I have had on this subject with my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski). It is also worth noting that Poland is currently the UK’s ninth largest export market. That is surely something that we should tap into more.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Poland is one of our largest and fastest-growing export markets. Whenever I go to Warsaw, the discussions I have in Polish are completely different from those I have when I speak in English. They are so much more open to discussions when people make the effort to learn their language. I very much hope that we can save the Polish A-level, purely from a commercial perspective.

[Nick de Bois]

I well take my hon. Friend’s point. I am blessed with a French name, but from the presumption that I speak French I recognise the constant disappointment of French-speaking people when I am limited to saying, “I am sorry, but I do not speak very good French”—in French, at least! My hon. Friend is right that the whole tone, mood and understanding can change when we nuance business relationships by using the language of the people we hope to do good business with.

What I said about Poland, I have already said about Turkey, and it is true of Bangladesh—a growing economy in the world, with unique and historic ties. It is set to be a growing economic partner to the UK, but that could be threatened by the decision to close the door on opportunity by not teaching Bengali, which is the 10th most spoken language in the world. That is a pretty big door of opportunity to close. I think that, in the mid to long term, these very same people can be at the forefront of the strengthening of links with their relatives of generations ago, back at home. I think that that can be part of a wider picture, and that what is becoming an increasingly smaller world can be a world in which we send our ambassadors from the United Kingdom, whose origins lie in the diaspora, to be our No. 1 representatives abroad.

Let me, at this point, pay tribute to Londra Gazete, a north London Turkish newspaper that has championed this issue—so much so that, in less than a week, more than 1,500 people had signed up to argue the case for it. It is not as if people are doing nothing now. The diasporas are certainly not sitting around doing nothing; they have their supplementary schools, and they follow the true Conservative principles of personal and family responsibility. Many people from different communities have set up such schools to help second and third-generation people who were born and raised in Britain to rediscover their language of origin. That is what is happening in the Turkish supplementary schools in Enfield. By keeping Turkish as a modern language, we formalise the achievement of pupils in those schools. It is a recorded academic achievement that can take them on to university, and, as I have said, they can become ambassadors and exporters for Britain.

Teaching in the supplementary schools is not a substitute for modern languages GCSE or A-level courses. I do not want our exam bodies to limit the ambition of any diaspora second or third generation. However, as I said at the beginning, this is not just about diasporas. We should not be limiting the ambitions of all Britons who are willing to learn important languages of the future. What may be a lesser modern language now will certainly not be a lesser modern language in the future.

I want to know whether the Minister will meet exam board decision makers—not least those on the OCR—as a matter of urgency, to raise this matter and convey the concerns that have been expressed in the House and in the modern languages community. I should be grateful if he threw his full weight and authority behind repeating the arguments that have been presented here tonight.

UK Trade & Investment

Debate between Daniel Kawczynski and Nick de Bois

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nick de Bois]

My hon. Friend is right to force me to highlight that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), is here unsupported by any Labour Back Benchers.

It is a pleasure to welcome the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) and the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) to the debate.

I cannot resist commenting that I am surprised that our coalition partners are not yet here. Perhaps it was the late night and we shall see them later. Let us be generous.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that small and medium-sized enterprises in the many constituencies represented by Labour Members will clearly be disappointed that their Members of Parliament have not turned up to this debate to find out how such companies can work with UK Trade & Investment to help them to export?

[Nick de Bois]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s well-timed intervention. The fact is that trade and investment affects every single constituency. It is the one thing that unites us and the one thing that serves all our constituents, wherever they may work or whatever they may do, because without trade and without business we have no taxes, no hospitals and no infrastructure. Frankly, it is at the heart of our jobs, growth and prosperity.

As a nation, we import some $640 billion—I used dollars deliberately and hon. Members will see why as I refer to other figures—but we export approximately $480 billion only. This is a timely debate. The UK’s share of global exports has declined sharply over the past decade from just over 5% in 2000 to a fraction over 4% in 2010—a 20% drop. We should not pretend that this country is alone in seeing such a drop, but some of our near neighbours have fared much better. Germany, to which I will be making further references during my contribution, managed to grow its share of global exports. Are UK companies slow to react to opportunities? Are there inherent uncompetitive disadvantages? Perhaps more pertinently, have we been tapping into the wrong markets? I will suggest later that that has been the case. Have we failed to reach the high-growth markets as a result, perhaps, of over-dependence on our European neighbours and the US? If one looks beneath the figures, one wonders whether there is a mismatch between the goods and services we currently sell and those demanded by high-growth economies. After all, we are not supplying high-capital goods to the booming markets in the BRIC countries for machinery, tools and equipment. Whatever the diagnosis, the treatment is the same. We have no choice but to increase exports and inward investment.