British Council

Debate between Lord Swire and John Baron

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.