British Council

John Baron Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

On that point, does my hon. Friend agree not only that the British Council is a great institution with a great history, but that it makes a valuable contribution to our country’s soft power capability? In fact, Joseph Nye cites the founding of the British Council in the 1930s as the originator of the concept of soft power. Does he agree that funding cuts by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office mean that there is a greater commercial burden on the British Council that risks eroding its credibility and integrity as it tries to become more commercial to make up for those cuts? Does he also agree that those cuts—I include the BBC World Service—are false economies, because money spent on our soft power capability can save on conflict and greater cost further down the line?

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend reads my mind—obviously he has been looking ahead to what I am about to say. I entirely agree with all those points. Although soft power is a nebulous concept that is perhaps a little overused, I will touch on it shortly. It is crucial that the British Council’s budget is protected in the best possible way and that it does not become a commercial organisation.

I recently had the privilege of chairing an event in Parliament as part of the British Council’s Young Arab Voices programme. I am confident in saying that all the parliamentarians present were enormously impressed by those young people’s articulacy and breadth of knowledge. That programme instils and distils the idea that conflict resolution and decision making should and can be achieved through argument and reason rather than by force. Therefore, by creating alternative pathways for young people, by offering a platform and a voice for young Muslims and Arab leaders, for example, and by changing lives and life chances through sport and a variety of cultural activities, the British Council provides a special, and arguably unique, way to address our security and stability.

I mentioned mutual interchange of ideas, which is not only vital, but something that the British Council is ideally placed and equipped to take on in the UK’s interests. Perhaps soft power, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), might be considered a bit of a tired novelty, but it is particularly relevant to the debate. I am sure that all hon. Members were delighted by the result of the Soft Power 30 in which Joseph Nye ranked the UK as wielding more of that intangible but critical quality than any other nation on Earth. That is a tribute to the splendid vibrancy of British culture and to those who, like the British Council, work to share the benefits of that culture as widely as possible.

Hon. Members will recall how Nikola Tesla spoke of the ways in which science can annihilate distance. As the world becomes increasingly globalised, that idea possibly terrifies some, but it inspires others to forge links with people and communities whose concerns in the past may have been rather distant from their own.

In reality, few agencies or organisations are better placed or have the reputation or cultural memory to take on the task of forging such links in the interests of British culture and our long-term security. For example, a society that precludes half its population—women and girls—from accessing education or the wider economy is only half an economy. Therefore, with many western and British values perhaps facing something of an ideological challenge, the British Council’s work in providing education for 90,000 refugees in Lebanon, its progressive focus on the role of women and girls in transforming the societies of north Africa and its role in training Iraqi teachers, reaching more than 100,000 children, show how it can change the nebulous currency of soft power into solid, tangible results.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

I do. ODA has been given as a demonstration of the effectiveness of the council’s work in least developed countries. The major challenge the council faces is the reduction in the FCO grant, which has been eroded constantly over the years. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome mentioned, the fundamental problem is that that increases the council’s reliance on commercially generated funding. We all acknowledge and welcome the council’s ability to raise that type of funding, but the reduction in grant funding reduces its flexibility to operate wherever it needs to in this rapidly changing world. I absolutely agree that the reduction in the grant is having a negative impact on the council’s ability to deliver across the board.

[Mr Baron]

In addition, is not there another concern about the decrease in FCO funding? It will not simply be a case of having to make up the lost income—and with regard to commercial activities, that can be many times the factor of the income required, as a turnover of £100 million may just about produce a profit of £10 million, and the reduction from the FCO grant would be £50 million over five years. As the British Council becomes more commercial to make up the lost revenue, its integrity and credibility could also be threatened. Does the hon. Gentleman consider that a risk as well?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I do. Also, as I will go on to argue later, the council’s English language teaching and exam work is important, makes a big impact and is very lucrative, but it tends to be for the elites in the societies where the council is operating. It is the high end of English language learning and people pay top dollar for it. If we are saying that it is important that we engage with the disaffected, disfranchised youths who are potentially going to become a security risk for us, it is arguable that that section of society will not be able to pay for those English language courses. Looking at the council’s strategic objectives and values, it is important that its reach is wide and that it goes into sections of society that its English language teaching and exams administration simply cannot reach.

The grant represents just 16% of the British Council’s funding. The rest is earned, as we have been discussing, and those earnings are projected to increase. Despite that good news, all is not financially rosy at the council. The FCO grant was reduced to £154 million in 2014-15, down from £201 million in 2009-10, so despite the extra £10 million in ODA, cuts to projects are having to be made. The choice for the council is stark: either a managed decline in its scale and reach, or growing its self-generated income to continue its work. The council has been forced to choose the latter, but should it have to and do we want it to?

Of course, it is truly commendable that the council’s English teaching and exam management can generate enough income from those who can afford to pay to fund projects aimed at those who cannot. Work done administering exams, managing international contracts and fostering corporate partnerships is important, but the more money that is raised from commercial sources, the more the British Council’s core purpose becomes divorced from its soft power potential. My concern is also that language teaching and exams are expensive, and so tend to benefit elites. Grant-funded activity is far more likely to have a wider reach.

We must recognise that, if the British Council is to remain an important wing of British diplomacy, public funding must remain an important element of its financial base. That is crucial for accountability and flexibility, and to supporting the council’s activities in fragile, unstable states, where it is harder for the council to raise the private funds to enable it to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with future leaders. It is an important fact that one in five world leaders studied in the UK; we are talking about a brand that we can, and do, export, but without public funding, it stops being linked to Britain as a country and becomes just another product.

ODA money is specifically for British Council work in areas that are of key interest from a security and stability perspective. Those areas are current flashpoints, and the money is crucially needed. In Tunisia, for example, a fledgling democracy is trying to embody all the original hopes of the Arab spring, but more of the foreign jihadists in Iraq and Syria originate there than in any other country. The British Council runs debating clubs across Tunisia—a programme that it wants to grow tenfold and that successfully engages young people at risk of radicalisation. For Tunisia, whose economy relies so much on tourism, the good publicity afforded by successful British Council projects feeds into confidence that the country can move on and rebuild after recent horrors.

ODA funding also goes towards co-operation work with countries such as China and India, where engaging with societies that are growing increasingly prosperous is an investment in our future.

The debate is about how best to build trust between Britain and the rest of the world, and nobody does that better than the British Council. More ODA money would maintain its public funding and consolidate its position as a respected arm of British diplomacy. The Government’s spending review is coming up, and my colleagues and I urge the Minister to communicate that request in the strongest terms to the Chancellor.

During his Grant Park acceptance speech in 2008, Barack Obama famously stated that the true strength of a nation is demonstrated

“not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals”.

I urge the Minister to take note and to ensure that the outstanding nature of the work done by the British Council is adequately reflected in the comprehensive spending review.

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[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I was not going to speak in the debate, but given that there is a little time available, I shall contribute briefly—I am grateful for the opportunity. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) on securing this important debate, which is timely, given the advent of the spending review at the end of the month.

I think that all those who have spoken in the debate accept that the British Council is a valuable institution. It does great and sterling work in encouraging co-operation and improving communication, and it makes a great contribution to Britain’s soft power capability. I mentioned earlier that Joseph Nye cited the British Council as the original forerunner of the concept of soft power when it was formed in 1934. The concept has moved on, obviously, and we now talk about smart power as well as soft power, but it is important to bring the discussion back to soft power. Although the term is somewhat abused, the concept is perhaps more relevant today, in this uncertain world, than it has been for a long time. Joseph Nye defined it as

“the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment”.

We are not alone in recognising the importance of soft power. Many other countries, including some—without wishing to name names—whose credibility is far less than ours in this context, if only because they are not democracies, are realising that soft power is an increasingly important part of an effective, full-spectrum response to the threats that they face. We would do well to learn from that in the UK. We have been through a decade, if not 12 years, when we have seen examples of hard power not providing the solutions that the Government hoped for, including our interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan post-2006, when we allowed the mission to morph into one of nation building, and Libya. Another is our positioning on Syria, where initially the objective was to support the rebels, although we have now realised that that is where the greater threat lies, so we have rightly turned on them—or elements of them, such as ISIL, al-Nusra and al-Qaeda.

We should realise by now that hard power solutions are not always what we hope they will be. That should remind us of the importance of soft power in this increasingly complex and uncertain world, yet we are cutting funding to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which is in turn cutting funding for its various activities, including its support of the British Council. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State may disagree with me about one or two aspects of our hard power interventions, but I think that he and I can agree—he may not be able to do so publicly—that we should not cut funding to the FCO in these times. If anything, we should increase its funding, at a time of increasing uncertainty, because we need our eyes and ears on the ground. We need our expertise in foreign policy issues generally to be properly funded as that can save additional costs and prevent mistakes further down the line.

I rail against further cuts to the British Council. We have heard about funding being cut from £201 million to, I think, £154 million. Okay, there has been a £10 million increase since, but that is still a substantial cut of something like £40 million to a budget of £200 million in the past five years. The British Council has been left in a difficult situation because it must either scale back its activities, which cannot be good for many people around the world, or the UK, when it comes to soft power capability, or become more commercial. A sum of £40 million may not sound a lot in today’s world where figures of billions are bandied around, but to generate that £40 million, assuming a profit margin of 10%, the British Council will really have to gear up its commercial activity.

Although there are early indications that the British Council is coping, there is a risk that as it tries to become more commercial and enterprising—I accept that there is always room for improvement in such areas—its activity will begin to feed back against it, in the sense that its commercial activities will begin to erode its credibility and integrity. A great part of its strength is its quasi-independent approach, but if it is becoming more commercial, the danger is that that will be eroded in many respects. Will the Minister address that fundamental point? This concern is shared by not only me and other hon. Members, but many people within the British Council, as well as outsiders and experts.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the effect on the reputation of the British Council and the United Kingdom is an important aspect of the discussion of financing? Is there a risk of a negative reputational effect if the British Council starts to be perceived as a money-making machine in the economies where it works, rather than an organisation concerned with building mutually beneficial partnerships?

[Mr Baron]

I tend to agree, but there is a balance. In defence of what happened previously, I would say that when the funding was £200 million, there were always commercial activities in the British Council, especially through the teaching of English overseas, for which its reputation is second to none. I agree, but I am trying to get across the point that as the British Council must increasingly gear up, in a commercial sense, to make good sizeable funding cuts—something like 20% in the past five years—there is a risk of losing sight of the balance. I ask the Minister of State to consider that and give us his response, because I, like the other Members in the Chamber, worry about the integrity and credibility of the British Council. That needs to be addressed, and it is a concern that has been expressed by those at the top table of the British Council itself.

I am conscious of time, but I will quickly move to another aspect of the funding that worries me. This might be partly the fault of the five-year political cycle, but we lose sight of the longer term when it comes to these sorts of funding issues. I suggest to the Minister that although these short-term cuts might meet a financial envelope set over a relatively small timeframe, there is a real danger that by making them now, we are creating false economies. The very nature of the British Council’s work means that we are talking about intangible benefits: the improvement of communication; fostering good relations with future world leaders when it comes to the UK; and increasing communication and education links. The benefit of all those intangibles cannot, in all honesty, be quantified, but we know they exist and can become more valuable in times of crisis. These short-term cuts could create false economies over the longer term.

Most generations that have preceded us believed that they lived in a safe and stable environment, certainly compared with their predecessors, but if history teaches us one thing, it is that this is an increasingly uncertain world, with variables that need to be catered for and anticipated as far as possible. The value of soft power in helping us to meet and address those uncertainties will increase as time passes, yet what is this country doing? It is cutting funding to its soft power capabilities, and not only the British Council. Although one accepts that funding for the BBC World Service has been transferred to the licence fee, there is still pressure on it, so that is another aspect of our soft power that is having to tighten its belt.

I argue that the FCO itself should be better funded and should not have to face the current cuts. We need a properly sighted foreign policy apparatus with the expertise to face increasing challenges, yet what are we doing? We are making further cuts to that as well. As long as I am a Member of this place, I will continue—unpopular though it may be for certain Front Benchers—to make the case for increased funding for the FCO, in the hope that one day someone will listen. To be better sighted and to have the in-house expertise to ensure that we do not make the sorts of mistake we have made over the past 10 or 12 years in our foreign policy interventions, for example, is a saving that is well worth making. Such an approach would lead to considerable savings further down the line that would far exceed the short-term savings we are achieving by having to cut the FCO budget.

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[Mr Swire]

Well, I had to check the title because at one point I thought it was “Shakespeare Lives”—life plural—which could have meant something completely different, but I have no doubt that we all look forward to that great celebration. It is arguably the most significant soft power opportunity for the UK since the Olympics. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome and others talked about the British Council and cultural diplomacy. I will return to that in a minute. The British Council is working with the GREAT campaign, British theatres, museums, artists and many others to put on an unprecedented programme of global activity that will include brand-new productions of Shakespeare’s plays, film adaptations, art exhibitions, public readings and educational resources for schools and English language learners of all ages.

The British Council must undertake all this activity in a rapidly changing world. This Government are determined to play a leading role in global affairs and we will continue to influence the international agenda. Our status as an international leader in soft power—something close to my hon. Friend’s heart—is incredibly important. Therefore, the British Council will play a fundamental role in ensuring the UK’s place at the top table.

Incidentally, I think that it was my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) who talked about the importance of science diplomacy.

[Mr Baron]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Swire]

If my hon. Friend did not, I apologise; I thought that he had mentioned science. I would just like to point to the work in the Foreign Office of Professor Robin Grimes and his team on scientific diplomacy. We have a new fund called the Newton fund, which is providing £75 million a year for five years; that is £375 million in total. We have 15 partner countries, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa, and so far £190 million of business wins and £250 million of leveraged funding have been delivered. Further work is being done to combat global issues such as dementia and antimicrobial resistance. Scientific diplomacy—forging links with others around the world—is another key part of soft power.

As hon. Members may know, the British Council went through a triennial review, published last year, which found the following:

“With its longstanding worldwide presence the British Council makes a significant contribution to the UK international profile…Its role is more relevant than ever: the potential return to the UK globally is enormous in terms of ‘soft power’, reputation and prosperity.”

The review also found that activity was not always well aligned with other bodies representing British interests overseas, and concluded that transparency, accountability and clarity of purpose should be improved.

I am pleased to say that the British Council has responded well to the review’s conclusions, taking action to ensure that those issues are addressed. The council is currently moving to a new operating model, so that its finances and commercial operations will be more transparent and accountable to the Government, Parliament and the British taxpayer. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is already chairing a new committee that aligns the Government’s priorities with the British Council’s activities overseas and, as I mentioned, the British Council has rearticulated its purpose in a way that aligns itself more directly with our international objectives to make Britain safer, to build prosperity and to increase British influence overseas.

Later this month, the Government will publish the initial results of their spending review and strategic defence and security review, which to a large extent will determine how we will meet the challenges of the future and adapt to this changing world. The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), who is now not in his place, and others commented on this. I confirm that we are working with the Treasury to help ensure that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the British Council continue to be funded in a manner that reflects our global ambition.

I will not be tempted to travel into the trap carefully laid by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay when he spoke so convincingly about the importance of having a Foreign and Commonwealth Office that punches above its weight. He will not hear me dissent from that as an aspiration, although I will not go into the funding implications of it. I will say that, during the past five to six years, within an extraordinarily tight spending envelope, the Foreign Office has been able to increase our international footprint around the world. I myself have opened up a number of new posts, not least an embassy in Asunción in Paraguay, an embassy in El Salvador, most recently a consulate in Belo Horizonte in Brazil, offices in China and so on. I think the Foreign Office is spread wide and punching well above its weight already, but he and others will look with close interest at our fate after the Chancellor’s autumn statement, and rightly so.

[Mr Baron]

I assure my right hon. Friend that no trap was intended, but I will leave him to muse on that. I suggest to him that footprint is one thing, but expertise and knowledge can be quite another. Where the FCO has been caught wanting—for example, during Russia’s annexation of Crimea it had no in-house expertise covering that area so it had to pull in other experts, and it had to pull in middle east experts during the Arab spring—it has been about expertise.

I want to bring my right hon. Friend back to the British Council. When it comes to funding, does he accept that many more cost savings could be made further down the line by avoiding conflict, by being better sighted and by influencing through soft power than will be achieved by the cuts that are being made to the budget? Does he agree, therefore, that we should adopt a much longer-term view of funding for our soft power capabilities, including the FCO and the British Council? Many would argue that the short-term savings are simply false economies, given the greater cost savings that could follow further down the line.

[Mr Swire]

I entirely concur with my hon. Friend’s views about the importance of soft power, or preventive power, and I argue that the United Kingdom is doing well in that respect. I do not share his nervousness about the increased commercial activities of the British Council. In fact, I would argue that the threat from the commercial activities of the British Council has been real. Our concern is that in some ways, particularly in the provision of English language teaching and exams, it can freeze out the private sector. That is why I am pleased that the British Council has introduced a new independent complaints process run by Verita, which will help it better to hear and understand stakeholder concerns, including the concerns of the English language teaching and education sector, and take steps to address them.

Furthering British interests overall, the British Council has agreed with UK Trade & Investment a new business opportunity development process to help British companies to enter difficult markets. I was particularly pleased to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) about his experiences with Christie’s, for whom he worked previously, and the assistance provided by the British Council in Shanghai. That seems to me precisely the sort of work that the British Council should do.

I listened carefully to my hon. Friend’s comments about British cultural diplomacy. I had the honour of working alongside Neil MacGregor for many years in a previous incarnation, and I saw him again the other night at the “Days of the Dead” event at the British Museum. I am delighted that, when he stands down from his role at the British Museum, he will take up an advisory role in Berlin and in India. That is eminently sensible, because although he would hate to be called one of our great icons, he is in danger of becoming one of the most valuable of the British objects that influence the world. He would hate me to say that, so I hope that he does not read the debate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his work to promote the salvaging of overseas cultural centres and places. This is not new. I refer him to the 2005 Conservative cultural manifesto, of which I was the author, in which we planned to create a fund, if we won the election, to do exactly the sort of thing that he has been doing. When one looks around the world and sees what has being going on in places such as Palmyra, it is clear that the need for such work has never been greater. There is a greater role for British cultural diplomacy.

Britain remains a leader on the world stage, with the networks that are necessary to promote our interests—despite all the pressures on those networks—to protect our people and values, to tackle complex and ever-changing threats, and, to use the words of the British Council’s 1940 report, to maintain our ability to

“create overseas a basis of friendly knowledge and understanding of the people of this country”.

There can, surely, be no safer or more prosperous world for the British people than one that sees Britain as a friend and understands our values. On that subject, I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central, who suggested that he would be taking part in the Wembley event for Prime Minister Modi, along with some 60,000 or 70,000 others—including, probably, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), who is the Minister for the next debate. We look forward to that visit.

It was interesting to hear what the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central said about a new generation of young Indians who come to the table without so much knowledge, or perhaps even baggage, about our colonial history, but who are interested in what modern Britain has to offer, our values and our culture—particularly our music, our fashion and our literature. That is hugely exciting, and it is why we have increased our diplomatic presence in India. The work of the British Council somewhere like that is a key priority, because I do not think we should just assume that a modern generation of Indians feels anything like the same link to this country as did their fathers and their grandfathers. It is abundantly clear that we have to work at it.

To conclude, I cannot put it better than the report of last year’s exacting triennial review process, which stated that the British Council was a

“valuable national asset and should be retained as the main official UK body for cultural diplomacy”.

The debate has benefited from the knowledge brought by the likes of the hon. Member for Aberavon, who worked for the British Council. It is something of a family business for him, and, as a Conservative, I am keen on family businesses. He may be as well, depending on which wing of the contemporary Labour party he sits. Other hon. Members who have touched on the work of the British Council see its long-term importance in the promotion of British soft power.

The Government are hugely proud of what the British Council does, and we want to continue to work with it under Sir Ciarán and whoever succeeds the chairman. I believe that Sir Ciarán is an ideal new chief executive to take the council forward. It is important to work with the council as it creates lasting friendships overseas and builds an appreciation of the United Kingdom—what it is, what it stands for and what it can offer—and as it helps to challenge some of the warped and hideous ideologies that are creeping up in this extraordinarily dangerous world. Ultimately, we must help the council to promote the values that we all hold dear.