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

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, one of the most thoughtful Members of this House, for his leadership on this important matter.

Rarely has our world been so troubled: over the past decade, we have suffered a global economic convulsion; Russia flexes its muscles on Europe’s eastern flank; the Middle East is racked by multiple tensions; and merciless philosophies galvanise new terrorist movements, both widely and in our midst. We are of course here to discuss soft power but we need hard power, too. Yes, we must bear down on our deficit but we must also define and fund a robust defence policy for the next 10 to 20 years, based on the range of threats against which we may need, as a nation, to defend ourselves. That is what good Governments do, whether or not there are votes in it. Only if we have a cogent and sustainable defence policy can we bring leadership, above all on our doorstep. Europe’s military capability does not match, as it should, Europe’s economic weight.

If we need hard power to defend ourselves against the evils of the world, we need soft power to try to make ours a better world. In the UK, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, has just said, we care about the rule of law. We also care about global poverty, climate change, human rights, free trade and self-determination. We want to promote tolerance, respect for difference and freedom of expression. Yet we recognise that this is a long haul. The anniversary of Magna Carta reminds us what a struggle it is in any society to achieve stability and harmony. We in the UK influence the world more than most, as others have said, because we are listened to more than most. That is not only for our commitment to a set of values and beliefs but for our contributions to science, learning, the arts and culture, and to wit. We can inspire the world with Shakespeare and Jane Austen, delight it with the Beatles and Ed Sheeran and entertain it with James Bond, Harry Potter and “Doctor Who”.

Again, as others have said more than once, no UK institution can and does project soft power more effectively than the BBC, the world’s best known and respected media brand. Ask Mikhail Gorbachev or Aung San Suu Kyi—or now the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, a welcome conversion—if you doubt that. Yet the BBC faces substantial challenges in continuing to maintain its pole position. Here I fear I must strike a sharper note than other noble Lords, for one of the most shameful acts in the history of the BBC was this coalition Government’s midnight raid on the BBC’s coffers, requiring it overnight, with no prior public or parliamentary debate whatever, to fund S4C, BBC Monitoring and BBC World Service from the licence fee. This ambush effectively cut one-sixth from the budget of the pre-existing BBC and cannot be glossed over or simply waved away. Moreover, this action breached a clear principle which had been held for almost a century: that the licence fee paid only for services for UK licence fee payers, and that the Government commissioned overseas services at arm’s length from an editorially independent BBC and funded them from taxation.

Worse still, the FCO fought to have its cake and eat it, too. It sought to continue to determine what world services the BBC should offer, in spite of the fact that the FCO would no longer fund them. For the first time in its history, and in breach of another sacred principle—established long ago when John Reith successfully fought off Winston Churchill’s bid to control the BBC during the General Strike—the Government are seeking to specify in detail the services that the BBC should offer. No one knows better than me that the BBC World Service is a sacred trust, but this deeply unsatisfactory and unprincipled position must be put right in the forthcoming BBC charter review. Indeed, the BBC and the Government should go further and fundamentally redefine what the BBC’s world role should be in the light not only of a new global order, about which many have spoken, but of revolutionary technological change. I do not expect that many potential recruits to IS listen to short wave radio. Rather, as we know, they engage in social media and plumb the darker depths of the internet. World Service provision needs to be rethought and reinvented for the digital age. Other BBC services, such as BBC America, valuably reach different audiences, but here, too, as a society we need to ask if we can build on that success and extend the BBC’s reach further across the globe.

The final critical issue to be addressed during charter review is the chronic undernourishment of the BBC’s World News television channel. The BBC has not only the most trusted and respected news ethos in the world, but also by far the largest and most extensive global news reach. Yet from China, Russia and the Middle East we see services—far more richly funded—aimed at global audiences that may eventually eclipse the BBC’s global news channel, unless and until that service receives a real transfusion of resources and can bulk up. In short, Britain needs not only a fit-for-purpose defence policy but a thorough consideration of how the world’s most powerful cultural institution can more effectively extend our soft power.