Armed Forces: Foreign Language Speakers

Lord Harrison Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Harrison]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the United Kingdom has sufficient speakers of foreign languages serving the Armed Forces and defence services.

[Lord Harrison (Lab)]

My Lords, “Parlez-vous Brexit?” was the eye-catching headline in last weekend’s i newspaper after suggestions that the designated EU Brexit commissioner, Michel Barnier, might insist that the forthcoming EU/UK Brexit negotiations are conducted in French. Twice I took our EU Financial Affairs Sub-Committee to Brussels to interview M. Barnier in his role as financial affairs commissioner, and I took care to address him in French. Speaking to someone in their own language is not only a mark of respect and welcome, manifesting an eagerness to listen and learn, it is also downright common sense. We have lost that art and our self-inflicted defenestration from the European Union will only further impair our ability to make and influence friends, nowhere more so than in our engagement with partners in the defence of the realm, in the armed services, diplomatic corps and intelligence services.

As a recent copy of the Soldier magazine declared:

“Many of our forebears would have been embarrassed to see how little knowledge we arrived with in Iraq and Afghanistan … our great grandfathers … spoke the language and knew the people”.

That was quoted in the Daily Telegraph. It goes on to suggest that the Government will not entertain promotion in the Army above the rank of captain for those without a foreign language. The programme started in 2015 and comes into full play in 2018. Could the Minister confirm that that is the case? What numbers of personnel have embarked on such training? What level of language skill—passing, competent or fluent—is expected? What particular languages and what numbers are envisaged over the next 10 years? Will the Minister further confirm that the method of achieving success in language acquisition will be part of an exchange programme between nations where UK personnel are encouraged to go on exercises to learn languages at the same time that we help to train the receiving country?

Before we can make an effective judgment on Britain’s capacity to defend itself through language competency, we urgently need facts and figures. These have been conspicuously absent despite numerous Written Questions from me. I hope the Minister can provide us with real and verifiable figures. He told me in a Written Answer earlier this year that some 700 armed services personnel hold a language qualification but there is no notion of how that compares with 10 or 20 years ago. Similarly, the category of expert speakers is but 132 out of that 700. How does that compare with 20 years ago? Crucially, does it match our current operational needs? How is it assessed and who by? We are told that the services hold competency in 48 languages but how does that compare with the past? What and where is the distribution of these languages, and where is the flexibility to learn new languages as changes happen? Is that 48 sufficient?

When discussing this topic with my noble friend Lord West, he told me that we need to use the Army and services’ reservists more to build up language competency. Does the Minister agree and does he have plans to do so? Indeed, what assessment and analysis has been made of the Defence Centre for Languages and Culture in terms of its capacity to meet the real language needs of the services? How does this compare with our erstwhile partners in the EU where languages are commonly learned and spoken as compared with the UK, a “proud nation of monoglots”?

HMG have recently replied to the House of Lords Select Committee on Soft Power. They are lukewarm to the suggestion that there should be an audit of language skills of civil servants across all departments, as proposed by the committee which,

“would bring sizeable advantages for officials working overseas or with foreign counterparts”.

Can the Minister tell us what the funding is for the FCO’s language centre and what we are going to do about this gaping hole of spoken languages acquisition? Are we increasing the budget to try to fill it? Similarly, are there sufficient funds to enable the Defence Centre for Languages and Culture to fulfil its crucial job? I highlight in particular its Operational Languages Award Scheme to incentivise MoD personnel in language skills. We urgently need more knowledge and transparency about our language holdings. Given that for cultural reasons the British have never revelled in language skills, Britain lacks the home grown linguists which most countries have.

Having said that, what greater efforts might the MoD make to recruit from our indigenous communities found here in Britain, especially from the subcontinent? Similarly, we are told that London is home to some 300 spoken modern languages. How many are mobilised to serve our defence and intelligence services? GCHQ, our largest employer of linguists, insists on recruiting only United Kingdom citizens, but is that wise? Are we not cutting off our nose to spite our face when we enforce that? Indeed, will the Minister tabulate the shortages in GCHQ of certain crucial languages, known to be Mandarin, Russian and Arabic? How much retraining of modern languages graduates does GCHQ do for the scarce languages which have to be used from time to tmie? Again, may we have the numbers, please?

In our universities is it time that we followed the example of UCL in requiring a foreign language GCSE as compulsory for all entrants? When I was at school, entry to Oxbridge required Latin, thereby breeding a generation of brash, bumbling Borises. At grammar school in Oxford I was taught to speak a dead language, Latin, while French was unspoken and confined to reading the texts of Racine and Corneille. Given the many unfortunate policies of successive Governments, must we not concentrate on in-house tuition in the armed and intelligence services while radically remodelling the primary and secondary long-term contribution?

Finally, on the role of the FCO in supporting our defence and armed services, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, tells how when he was Permanent Secretary, some 500 people spoke Arabic, but now the figure is 131. Is that not sheer madness? Embassies are now increasingly geared to promoting trade and business, all needed in the lonely post-Brexit world, but our foreign embassies still need to do their regular job of intelligence gathering for the defence of the realm—a Government’s first duty to the people. On a parliamentary visit to Estonia in April, I met General Wes Clark and General Sir Richard Shirreff, also visiting NATO’s local HQ as well as the Russian border and the college serving the Russian-speaking minority of Estonians. We heard the good news today that the UK is posting 800 personnel to help our Estonian colleagues inhibit a Russian incursion but can the Minister find out for us how many of those 800 are language experts in either Estonian or Russian?

The news this morning that sixth form colleges are axeing French, German and Italian from their core curricula is deeply disappointing, but my task in today’s debate is to suggest that HMG must rely on the defence and intelligence services to plunder home-grown language skills. We must make do and mend because we cannot wait for the schools to do the job. Before I came into this debate I was stopped by one of the Doorkeepers who told me that when he was on pre-deployment in the Army, he learned languages from people with language skills here in the United Kingdom. After that they could go on to the Army language centre. This is an important issue which has not been covered and I am very pleased to begin today’s debate.