Government Departments: Soft Power

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I welcome this very timely debate, led by my noble friend Lady Taylor. I echo the words that we have just heard: this country has so much to offer and has done so much already. It is quite extraordinary to think of the influence of the United Kingdom throughout the years. You need think only of the English language, but there are many other aspects in which we have had influence. There has been some talk today of the importance of our culture and so on, but no mention of things like football and cricket. These sorts of things carry with them an immense image of Britain. Both the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, mentioned the monarchy. It is quite true, I suspect, that this will not make the headlines tomorrow for the same reason as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, gave—because the royal wedding will get the headlines. Some 10,000 journalists are here from other countries, and maybe one message is that some of the monarchies in the Middle East might like to take a lesson or two on constitutional monarchy, which could help them to some degree.

In my opening comments, I said that this debate was timely, because I have believed for some considerable time that there is a mood shift around the world against dictatorship. That mood has been growing for some considerable time; it has been led, as several noble Lords have said, by the intervention of hard power from time to time. With Iraq, or going right back to the Falklands, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, will well remember, the removal of dictators can at times precipitate a continuing change, which is profoundly important. But there is no doubt in my mind that one of the biggest changes at the moment, which is enabling the Arab spring and other events to take place, is the development of the internet. Perhaps we should remember at a time like this the contribution of Sir Tim Berners-Lee in developing the world wide web. These contributions that we have made are very wide and very deep.

I do not want to say anything about the BBC World Service other than that I agree with everything that has been said and it is the height of madness to cut it at the current time when people are holding up banners in some of the demonstrations in the Middle East saying, “Thank you BBC”. Attention was drawn to this by the e-mails from Peter Horrocks to many Members, but it was not the first time I had seen a banner like that in the middle of a demonstration. The BBC is immensely important to this.

I want to focus a little on what else we have to offer. When people think of the image of the United Kingdom around the world, apart from things like the English language, Shakespeare and football and so on, they will think of good governance and the rule of law—and they will think of a constitutional monarchy and freedom of speech. When all those people stand on the pavement outside the House, taking photographs of the demonstration, which so many of us are worried about, of the man who has been there for many years, that is as much about saying how the British are a free people as it is about saying, “My God, this is an environmental disgrace”. I would love to read their e-mails or letters to know which side of the argument is carried. It is a demonstration of the people’s views on the commitment in the United Kingdom to the rule of law. It is that issue that I want to come back to.

The Minister will know, as I have raised this on a previous occasion, about the development of a postgraduate school of law, which I have been working with at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, with outreach into Palestine. That is the sort of thing that we need to do. I want to develop that theme, because it leads on to something else. The conversations that I had about a year ago led to conversations with a couple of other Arab ambassadors. One of them was the Tunisian ambassador, who is no longer with us. The new Tunisian ambassador, Hatem Atallah, came to see me on Tuesday and spent an hour with me here in the House, when we discussed in some depth what Tunisia needs. I have been very anxious throughout all my contacts—and I know that this applies to this and the last Government—not to tell countries what they need but to ask them what they need and how we can assist. That is very important.

Some of the things that the ambassador mentioned are very important. He told me that the Tunisian elections will take place on 26 July, and the Tunisians look forward to international observers on that from the EU and so on. He told me that the National Assembly will then have the duty to draw up a constitution. Then we got into the detail. He was saying that the Arab spring—I will call it that, although they were not his words—has led to enormous expectations about democracy, freedom, the rule of law and so on. Anybody in this House who has had any time in politics at all knows the danger of having raised expectations that you then cannot deliver on. The problem that we face, particularly in the Middle East at the moment, is: the expectations of democracy and so on are enormously high, but how can you deliver on them?

One thing that Mr Atallah and I talked about on Tuesday was what sort of questions you ask when you are setting up a new constitution. We talked about the importance of the Ministers being accountable so it is about what sort of questions they are asking them but, as he said, it is also about what questions they are asking the people standing in the elections. One thing that he wanted, perhaps more than anything else, was the opportunity for Tunisian people in relevant positions to come and stay here in the United Kingdom to work with various groups. This will warm the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, because we discussed in some depth how we could help them to develop a free and responsible media.

His view was that they did not need any help with journalist courses, as they have those. He said the problem was that, when somebody left one of those courses with their qualification, they had been taught all the right things but were then told what to write. In other words, they had no opportunity to learn how to report in a balanced, neutral and informative way. For example, the reporting of elections will be immensely important, but he wondered where the journalists would come from who could see an election taking place and know how to report what the various candidates were saying. He told me that it would be very useful if they could place journalists here in the UK to see elections taking place. It may be too late for next week, but he will be writing to me about that to indicate in a bit more detail what they want. I will endeavour to see that we do it. I hope that the Thomson Foundation, which both I and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, have mentioned, might be able to help on that.

There is a range of areas here where we have to think rather differently. My noble friend Lady Taylor cast this debate in terms of the co-operation between government departments. I do not doubt that at all but we have to be more flexible in our thinking because it also needs to involve ways in which we can use all the other institutions that we take for granted—whether private, public or anything else—in order to try and place people for experience. If, as I suspect, they have the basic training right in many cases, as in the journalism example that I gave, we need to focus on how we can then help their journalists to learn beyond that.

Much the same applies to the rule of law issue. When I began to question the Zayed University in Abu Dhabi about what it offers, I was sent all the details of its law course but, not being a lawyer, I ran them past many experts here in this House who have been helpful to me. Yes, it is a good course but, interestingly, on the postgraduate side it virtually stopped. What happened was that any good student then went to Britain, the United States, Europe or elsewhere to get their postgraduate training. I told them, “If you're going to do that and are to be taken seriously in this world in future, you have to do human rights or humanitarian law and international law”. That is what we are now exploring. We are looking at doing it in an outreach operation with Palestine as well, in order to help them develop the mechanism of the state. That is working through universities but we already have here an organisation, based at York University, which helps British universities to connect with overseas ones. I am very encouraged by that and I work with it to try and make these contacts, so we really have to think much more adventurously.

I also think that we have to start looking ahead a bit. It was almost impossible to predict what happened in the Middle East. There are other areas where there is change but they are actually signalling it. I shall give the example of Cuba. If you want to read the speech of Raúl Castro, it will take you a lot longer than the 12 minutes that I have been given here. It is interesting, though, because he is clearly saying that Cuba wants to open its economy and its political system.

It is not just in Cuba or the Middle East. There is what I regard as a historical shift away from an idea that somehow or other some people are born to rule and can be in power for 40 years, towards the idea of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. We in the United Kingdom have to get away from the idea that we are somehow to blame for these things and that we are imposing our values on other people. Ideas about democracy and the rule of law are not just Western concepts; they have been around in many other forms. We can say with confidence that if you want a modern, progressive, stable and peaceful society, you need certain basic factors such as democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law. We need to identify those areas where we can be most helpful and offer that help. I hope that in some way we can all lend our support to that.