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11.32 am
Sir Jim Lester (Broxtowe): It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). I agree with every word that he has just said.
I recognise that the public in general do not know about the British Council. But I speak as a member of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs since 1982--14 years' experience of looking at the British Council as part of
the Select Committee's responsibility to consider foreign policy. That is why I want to speak today, and I just want to say three things.
First, the credit for the figures that I am about to quote rests with my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman) in his Macleod essay entitled "No Hiding Place: British economic policy in the modern world". That is the context in which things should be placed.
Britain consistently punches above its weight. The figures in the essay show that Britain has only 1 per cent. of the world's population, but 3.5 per cent. of its gross domestic product. Since 1979, Britain's overall international trading position has changed from 20 per cent. for exports and 27 per cent. for imports in 1979 to 23 per cent. for exports and 25 per cent. for imports in 1994. Our exports of goods and services at constant 1990 prices have risen from 22 per cent. of GDP in 1979 to 27 per cent. in 1994. Those are critical figures in terms of Britain's economic place in a new world with a global economy, and they are good figures.
We know that, diplomatically and politically, we punch above our weight. Britain is a tiny country, which is a member of the Commonwealth, the United Nations Security Council and all the rest. I shall not rehearse the details because I think that we all accept that; Britain punches above its weight, economically, politically and diplomatically. Part of the reason for that is that, in the years since 1979, the Foreign Office has targeted the improvement of its performance.
The Select Committee is now committed to producing a report on cultural diplomacy and it has shown that that plays a vital part in Britain's export efforts and capacity to work in the world. The term "cultural diplomacy" had not been thought of before the Select Committee considered it, but the two essential elements of cultural diplomacy are the BBC World Service and the British Council. The Select Committee's most recent report on the future of the Commonwealth comes back again to that question and gives tremendous support to the British Council and the role that it plays.
We are a member of the European Union, with an economic base that enables us, through the Commonwealth and the rest of the world, to look ahead to a prosperous future. I come here to the point made by the hon. Member for Linlithgow, which is the second thing that I wanted to say. Obviously, British policy must be to expand and to continue to punch above our weight in the world, but on what basis should we evaluate the things that are vital in terms of achieving that objective? The Government have no way of determining whether something is a real benefit that should be backed and on which extra money should be spent because it is good.
The English language, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton) has just suggested, is one of those things, as is the British Council. The Foreign Office comes into the same category. I wish that we had a Treasury Minister on the Front Bench rather than my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, because for the Foreign Office, which does such magnificent work overseas, to be spending less than 1 per cent. of our gross public expenditure and achieving so much for it, yet to be subject to regular miserable chippy-chippy cuts that result in what has happened to the British Council, is absolutely crazy. By spending very little money, we could achieve even better figures than those that I have put forward.
I work closely with my old university, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex mentioned education. Britain attracts 250,000 students at a value of about £2 billion to our economy through the joint operation of universities and the British Council. The Americans, with their great country, attract only 450,000. Again, we punch above our weight and we are attractive because of our language and standards and because of the high regard in which people hold what Britain has to offer.
We must have a system of government that evaluates the purpose and the value to Britain of the British Council's budget and, therefore, backs winners rather than chopping things that clearly have an enormous benefit, particularly when we are talking about piddling amounts of money. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is serious and suddenly a lot of money has been found for the farmers. The British Council needs only a fraction of that.
My third point concerns the way in which things are done. Great institutions such as the British Council cannot suddenly make reductions in their costs without facing what I call double jeopardy. People have to be made redundant, so the cost of redundancy must be added to the amount of money that has to be found. That is double jeopardy because money is being wasted in order to get rid of people, particularly people overseas who have often been devoted servants of Britain, working for the British Council. They require some notice in their own interests, because they have no fallback in terms of social security in many of the countries in which they work. That operation has been very badly handled, and leaves the British Council in limbo because of double jeopardy.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Central(Mr. Litherland) suggested that people do not know much about the British Council. Last Wednesday, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee had before it Sir Martin Jacomb and Sir John Hanson to press all those points. The hearing was televised, although I suspect that it was not shown on any television channels. Nevertheless, the transcript of that meeting is available.
I should like to quote from the hearing a question--naturally from me--in which I said that the council was strongly backed by the members of the Committee. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex said, we had been talking to the right people and received warm words and suggestions that action might be taken. I asked Sir Martin:
Sir Martin replied:
That is a very profound statement from someone who has devotedly worked with the British Council.
Miss Emma Nicholson (Torridge and West Devon):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) on ensuring that this important subject is being debated at all. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and to listen to the vice-chairman of the British Council, the right hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton), who said that he was speaking with some euphoria when he reeled off credit upon credit for the British Council.
All of us could list the council's credits, because it is a most remarkable organisation--but the right hon. Member for Mid-Sussex perhaps ducked the issue at the end of his speech. Surely he cannot be in favour of the disastrous--or near-disastrous--cuts to the British Council, because a 16 per cent. cut in real terms will surely most seriously threaten its capacity to maintain an effective presence internationally and its programme in regions that are important to British interests.
The council operates in 109 countries, and, as we all know, it is currently the only Government organisation that sustains and promotes British culture. We know that the British Government will not rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, so we must rely for the promotion of the English language and British culture wholly on the British Council.
I am unclear why the Government wish to impose on the British Council this serious public expenditure cut of 16 per cent. in real terms. Surely we are correct in saying today, as the vice-chairman has already said, that there has been immense praise for the British Council, even from a former Foreign Secretary and from the current Foreign Secretary.
In his letter about the cuts to the council's chairman, the Foreign Secretary stated that the reductions did not mean that he did not appreciate
that the council
He also acknowledged that the council had
and that the council was
The Foreign Secretary went on to ask again for the impossible. He said that he nevertheless hoped that it would be possible for the council
Of course, those two objectives just do not match up.
I understand that the council has only one way in which to meet the new grant in aid regulations, which will be a significant reduction in its staffing levels, with higher proportions of cuts in the UK. The saddest aspect of those cuts is that the British Council is a people-led organisation. How can we imagine that the skills of those whom the British Council will be forced to shed are replaceable in the short term? We know that it takes a
lifetime to learn the language and culture of a country. It is a lifetime skill. I believe that British Council staff have been vastly underrated by the Government, and I am sad that those magnificent and skilled people will be lost in helping to implement British Government policies.
Hon. Members have, of course, already mentioned the possibility of private investment. The council does not have the means or access to the means to pay for investment, so private funding has been suggested. But if we examine the closure of the BBC's Arabic service, we immediately notice that private funding on the international diplomatic scene brings significant and heavy political and diplomatic costs. The Government's mishandling of the unfortunate al-Masari case has led to the direct closure of the BBC Arabic service, which was surely a private investment in a Government effort.
My questions on the BBC Rwanda service have still not been answered by the Foreign Secretary. We again notice immediately that that service might go because of the private investment that is keeping that service alive. Therefore, I suggest that to look for private funding to fund the British Government's policy internationally is a very shortsighted and ultimately foolish way in which to try to fill the gap, to replace the funds that the Government have mislaid somewhere. I am tempted to say, and believe, that the Government are asking the British Council to cut its cultural coat--which is Britain's cultural coat--to fit the Conservative party's shaggy cloth.
I also suggest that the pre-eminence of the English language internationally may have come about more because of the fact that English is the language of the computer industry and of the air traffic control industry. Mere communication by a language in the modern world does not mean that culture will come with it. English language culture--the civilisation of Shakespeare--is daily diminishing because of our absence from UNESCO. When we speak of the British Council, we speak no longer about its excellent underlying work in teaching the English language, but about the loss of the English, Scottish, northern Irish and Welsh cultures internationally.
The 1992 Conservative party manifesto, for the present Parliament, stated:
I was deeply saddened when I realised that that was not a valid statement of the policy being implemented. The reverse of that statement has happened with the BBC World Service, and the reverse is now happening with the British Council.
I should like to talk about the great difficulties in restructuring the British Council, which has been restructured and moved to Manchester--hence the initiator of this excellent debate. That restructuring was surely designed to make a leaner, meaner British Council to act into the millennium and beyond. Of course it is necessary--if the council is to protect its front-line operations, as the Secretary of State demanded in his statement to the House of Commons on 29 November--that the reductions come from savings in the United Kingdom. By 31 March next year, 350 posts will go,
and those job losses will cost £36,000 per person. The Government, in their dying throes, are forcing an expensive game upon the British Council.
As the hon. Member for Linlithgow has already asked, why do not the Government allow the council's revenue-earning activities to finance its continuing development and perhaps even its enlargement? There is no subsidy for the activities of the enterprises from the grant in aid. Those areas of work have to build their own reserves in order to provide for capital investment and cover commercial risk. If they do not do that, they will not grow and will ultimately fail. The added loss of impact for Britain overseas will be large because the British Council operates in markets or parts of markets that might not be commercially viable for other United Kingdom service providers, as the vice-chairman has already pointed out.
"Are they really taking your concerns seriously? Can you give us some idea of the timescale in which you would want an assurance on which you can work before you actually have to take the sort of decisions, which you are obviously working on, which you feel would be very damaging to your future?"
"The fact is we are already really in extra time. We have been talking about this since last November, which is nearly five months, and still there is no assurance of money. If there is to be no alleviation and we have to make reductions, particularly reductions abroad, to handle that sensibly and sensitively and in such a way as to secure the minimum damage to this country, action has to be taken now."
"the outstanding contribution"
"makes to the UK's overall diplomatic effort."
"done a great deal to improve efficiency by rationalising its UK network and reducing overheads",
"extremely leanly staffed."
"to continue to maintain a global network and to avoid significant post closures."
"the British Council acts as a cultural ambassador for Britain and for the English language . . . We will promote the English language by strengthening both the British Council and the BBC World Service."
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