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

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I start, perhaps unusually, with the confirmation that because I am no longer a director and the chairman of the Good Governance Foundation, I do not need to declare it as an interest any more. That is for a variety of reasons, which I will not go into, but one is the difficulty of asserting soft power around the world and carrying that out. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, whose views on this I have known for some time, on an exceptionally good report. There is so much in it that you could speak on it for a long time, which I will not do. I certainly do not want to repeat all the praise that has been given to the various institutions—the British Council, the BBC, and the members of the European Union and the Commonwealth—and the power of the English language. All those and 101 other things give us enormous influence around the world, but that influence would not apply if we did not also have an attractive culture and society.

The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and one or two other noble Lords mentioned RT and the amount of money being poured into it. I watch it and, frankly, it has deteriorated quite a bit in the last few years. It has always been a propaganda channel aimed at trying to undermine western countries and values but also at propping up Russian nationalism. The interesting thing about RT of course is that, if you look at it in terms of changing people’s attitudes outside of Russia, it is not very effective. The reality is that there are not thousands of people queuing up to get into Russia; rather, there are more people coming out of Russia into Britain than the other way round. The reason for that at the end of the day is not just because of the BBC World Service, good as it is, but because of all the other institutions and things that make us the free, prosperous and stable society that we are. It is that stability and prosperity, and the rule of law, that I want to focus on for a moment.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, that we pay too little attention to the rule of law. One of the things I tried to do through the Good Governance Foundation was to spread the recognition of Britain’s role in the rule of law. I pay great tribute to another institution we do not give enough support to, the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, which does an awful lot on the rule of law both through the European Union and directly. A couple of years ago, I tried to get the late Lord Bingham’s book The Rule of Law— which is only a short book of a couple of hundred pages, if that—published in Arabic and was told there was not a big enough market for it. I doubt that. I think there would be, but it is a matter of how it is promoted.

One thing that I have seen in a variety of countries around the world is that people are not necessarily shouting for democracy, although that is a long-term goal, but they are shouting for the rule of law. If you can get fairness and stability from the rule of law, you can build the democratic foundations. Trying to do it the other way round, as we have discovered to our cost, does not really work. As we saw in Egypt recently, and indeed in Iraq, going for democratic structures when you do not have the rule of law can all too easily lead to the winning party taking a winner-takes-all approach to democracy. Immediately, the minority groups of one type or another, or the losers, feel excluded and you get the collapse of that democratic process. It is a very important issue. We have so much expertise on the rule of law in this country, and among many Members of this House, and if we could involve that more in our programmes around the world it would be very useful. The reputation of Britain as a country of law is very great.

One of the bullet points in the report summary refers to resources for embassies. The fascinating thing about the report is that it has identified this dramatically changing relationship in the world between hard power, soft power and what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, then defined as smart power, when you combine them. The problem I find, and I do not think I can be alone in this, is that it is hard to see where this started and where the process will end. It is fast-moving and very confusing in a way. I am sure that our embassies around the world have a key role to play in it. Recently, I led a delegation to Bahrain with Members of this House and of the House of Commons, which produced a report on its reform process. I have to say that it is doing well. It ought to be emphasised that this country is trying, in a region where it is incredibly difficult to make progress, and our report indicated that its efforts need to be supported.

The reason that I mention that is that the ambassador, who I gather has now moved on from that post, a man called Iain Lindsay, was immensely helpful in enabling us to meet all the people who we needed to meet there, making the contacts that we needed to make. Similarly, when I was working for the Good Governance Foundation, I helped Abu Dhabi to set up a postgraduate course in the rule of law with outreach to Palestine, so that 28 Palestinian students could attend the course. The Foreign Office, through both the Palestinian and Abu Dhabi link, was immensely helpful.

In doing all that, I stumbled across an organisation called the Training Gateway, which is based at York University. Several Members have spoken about the importance of education. They are absolutely right, of course. What was fascinating was that the Training Gateway—which is self-funding; it charges its customers —was able to link universities, colleges and private sector groups in training programmes around the world. In that sense, it is not dissimilar to what the British Council and one or two other organisations are doing. The difference is that it will relay any request by a particular country or an organisation within that country. I was very impressed by the lady who runs it, Amanda Selvaratnam. She has developed quite a skill in linking what countries need to a British institution, be it a state or national one, such as a university, or a private company. That has been excellent. The thing that I and she find most difficult in all this is the linkage between the various companies, organisations, government departments and so on.

I give an example of my experience on that from Burma—Myanmar, as it is now known. I have been in touch with the ambassador here and, through him, to the Attorney-General in Burma. I talked to them about the possibility of links with the Training Gateway to build capacity on the rule of law there. I received several letters from the Attorney-General, Dr Tun Shin. One stated,

“if I may say so, I feel that at this primary stage it will be beneficial to give preference to high level officials to attend”,

courses in the UK, to

“gain knowledge which they can disseminate”,

to the people who work for them. In a later letter, he stated that they were very interested in having training from the Training Gateway in courses delivered overseas or there in Myanmar.

At the end of the day, it did not happen. One reason is that however much help we were getting—I am in no way critical of DfID or the Foreign Office—there was not enough in Burma itself to build that structure. We need to think about how we can place a person in countries such as Burma to ensure that they can deliver on the ground what their leaders say that they need. That interlinkage is so difficult.

My final point is on the references in the report to hyperconnectivity, which is very important. It touches a bit on what the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said about the health service overseas. I was struck recently when looking at some pictures of Alexandria in Egypt, sent to me by my daughter, who is there at the moment, of the sewage in the road and things of that nature. I went away to look up the top infectious diseases in Alexandria. Sure enough, they are all water-borne or food-borne, because of the lack of hygiene. I do not doubt that the real answer is for the Egyptian Government, with or without aid, to provide a better sewerage system, but I also know that with hyperconnectivity you can do what the report touches on: give good local organisations advice and help on basic hygiene, which you can do even though you have problems in the street every time that there is heavy rainfall.

That is what is so exciting in the report: it opens up new parameters to think about. I urge the Government to think about the use of our interconnection through the internet. We are a very connected society, and if we link into that, it is a matter not just of aid but of helping to build institutions, even at a very local level, to deal with the problems that I have just described.