Examination of witness (Questions 1-19)
TUESDAY 24 APRIL 2001
MR MARK
LEONARD
Chairman
1. Mr Leonard, director of the Foreign Policy
Centre, may I welcome you warmly on behalf of the Committee? You
know that the Committee is currently examining the Departmental
Report of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and we shall be
meeting Sir John Kerr and his FCO team this afternoon. The Committee
thought it would be of help to us to gain perspective, to sharpen
our own views, to meet outsiders, although since you are part
of a think tank or a task force within the FCO even you may have
been grasped to the bosom of the FCO a little. To begin, it would
be helpful if you would give us your own broad critique of the
FCO which will assist us in our examination of that report. What
is your line? Where do you come from in examining the FCO?
(Mr Leonard) Thank you very much for inviting me here.
Maybe, before I start, I should just explain very briefly who
I am and what the centre is. The centre was set up in 1998 to
explore Britain's role in the world, the impact of globalisation,
to try and look at the issues which cut across departments and
which cut across frontiers. We are not a traditional foreign policy
think tank that looks at Britain's relationship with every single
part of the world and focuses on bilateral issues. We are more
there to explore some of the issues which may have been neglected
in the past by traditional foreign policy think tanks or ones
which are coming up on the agenda. One of the big projects which
we are working on at the moment is a project on the whole idea
of public diplomacy, looking at new audiences that the Foreign
Office and other foreign services and their partners need to reach.
If you do not mind, maybe I can talk a bit about that because
it may be a good way of framing broader discussions about the
role of the Foreign Office. The first thing to recognise is that
we are operating in a different environment, where many of the
threats to security are not from aggression from other countries;
they are cross-border issues, where we need new networks to deal
with them which cannot just consist of our relationships with
other governments. Many of the issues which have been most problematic
and which are the most interesting in the report, I found, were
some of those issues where new partnerships were being created
and new tools within multilateral institutions. Also, a focus
on working with democracies, so governments boxed in by public
opinion or boxed in by domestic campaigns, and societies which
are very porous where you have lots of different sources of information.
If we take that as our starting point, I think it is quite a dramatic,
gradual shift for the whole notion of foreign services. In our
work on public diplomacy, we looked a bit at what it means to
shift from communicating mainly with small, government elites
to wider audiences. The most important challenge behind scaling
up is, first of all, to have a much clearer sense of who the decision
makers are within different countries and relate that to the foreign
policy objectives of Britain and of the service and to start developing
a much broader array of tools to get to them, so segmenting audiences
much more intelligently, building up communities of interest which
cut across those borders, working with NGOs, as the Foreign Office
has done, on conflict diamonds and on other issues and with companies
as well; also, seeing how one can maybe shift resources from bricks
and mortar and from buildings into work which has a broader impact.
That is as true for the Foreign Office as for other agencies.
I hope the recent review of the British Council's work is an example
of how that can work. Secondly, we need a much closer link between
traditional diplomacy and public diplomacy, not just because of
the range of issues where public diplomacy is important on everything
from maintaining international coalitions on Kosovo and other
areas to the recent work on foot and mouth and British beef etc.
There are a whole series of issues where you have a cross over
between traditional diplomacy and public diplomacy. What we have
looked at is how one can include this public diplomacy element
much more clearly within the formulation of traditional diplomacy,
for the Foreign Office to be clear about what it has the resources
and expertise to do itself and where it must enlist the support
of others and, when it works with others, what rules should govern
those relationships. I think there is a very interesting agenda
on the rights and responsibilities of NGOs to make sure that the
public interest is guarded when one works with NGOs, but equally
when one works with the private sector to make sure that there
are very clear rules of engagement and transparency there. Sometimes,
as with conflict diamonds for instance, where there is a very
important top line byproduct, sometimes there are byproducts such
as helping people reinforce natural monopolies which may be worth
doing if one takes the public interest into account. I think transparency
is very important. I also think that there has to be more strategic
planning of what we are trying to do in particular market places.
I know that in most areas there are now public diplomacy committees
on the ground and that they are a useful forum to make sure that
activities are coordinated. They are increasingly trying to think
more strategically, but it is really important for us to have
a much more detailed idea of what we are trying to do in particular
countries; and also to make sure that we have the skills in place
to do that. I know that the public diplomacy section has been
putting a lot of thinking into training staff and appointing secondees
from outside government, but I think it is as much about the skills
that we value in people that we are recruiting to work in different
agencies, both within government and outside government and also
what counts when their performance is being reviewed. That has
to be coupled with much clearer attempts to track perceptions,
to set targets, to benchmark. That whole notion of moving from
doing everything to facilitating foreign policy is one of the
most important challenges for government. If we look at all the
sorts of issues that we are talking about, they are issues where
there are many organisations within Britain who may be best placed
to lead public opinion on the ground in other countries.
2. Are you suggesting that you supplant traditional
diplomacy in some way?
(Mr Leonard) Traditional diplomacy is as important
as it has ever been. It is something which this country has been
very good at and where there are great strengths to build on.
What I am suggesting is that that should be supplemented with
a whole new tier of diplomacy. Some of the most interesting questions
are ones where we have had almost a hybrid diplomacy of traditional
diplomats working with NGOs, working with businesses, around issues
which often cut across frontiers which are often multilateral.
3. What are the specific implications of what
you are saying for management of the FCO in terms of personnel,
recruitment for particular skills and in terms of the plant, the
assets, which the FCO has overseas?
(Mr Leonard) In terms of management and personnel,
first of all, I think we need to make sure that we need to make
sure that we have a broader range of skills. That is something
which is already happening and there is a lot of work being done
both to bring people in from outside the Foreign Office on secondments
and also entering at higher levels and also Foreign Office people
moving outside the office on secondment to other organisations.
That is something which needs to continue and it has been quite
successful in all sorts of different ways, if we look at specific
examples where people have brought entirely different skills sets
and degrees of knowledge into that. Secondly, we need to carry
on monitoring the work that is being done on recruitment. There
has been a lot of progress to make sure the Foreign Office becomes
more representative of British society but there is still a long
way to go on that. Thirdly, in terms of the sorts of performance
measures we are looking at and the skills that we value in staff,
there has to be a much clearer recognition of communication skills,
of other sorts of knowledge. Some of the public diplomacy indicators
need to be worked at a lot because they are quite new indicators
and sometimes are not as well thought through.
4. And implications for the plant, for traditional
embassies?
(Mr Leonard) That is something which is happening
as well. First of all, people are looking at how one manages the
front of house of these sorts of organisations. You have the whole
notion of one stop shops, where resources are being saved by all
sorts of different organisations which are related to Britain
coming together in a building which embodies British values and
something positive about Britain. Secondly, if we do think really
strategically about it, there may be creation of regional hubs
in some parts of the world and having virtual embassies around,
not necessarily having no presence on the ground at all but carrying
on the practice which we have built up of having different sorts
of presences. Increasingly, we are finding we need completely
different operations in different countries which should be much
more attuned towards the local objectives. One of the positive
things about recent years has been the growth in the use of locally
engaged staff who give you a real opportunity to do these sorts
of things because they know the ground very well. They speak the
languages. They have a very good sense of what the priorities
are. Maybe one of the other things I would like to see is for
us to lift the glass ceiling which stops locally engaged staff
getting higher than being a press counsellor in an embassy, particularly
locally engaged people, who have had some experience in the United
Kingdom, who have lived here and who know the country well. They
could help to build better relationships. The other thing is the
sorts of activities which are undertaken. If you look at Germany,
for instance, the role of foundations like the Friedrich Ebert
Stiftung and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in promoting party to
party links, that is an incredibly useful tool for influencing
countries. If you get very strong links between political parties,
I need hardly tell people here how much help that can be.
Mr Rowlands
5. In making your case, you took as an illustration
Seattle. You said that Seattle showed how well organised elements
could wreck the agenda for governments, even in international
summits. If your arrangements for public diplomacy were in place,
how would they effectively counter a determined effort of that
kind? Tell me how it would have been different.
(Mr Leonard) The purpose is not to stop people organising
on a global level. It is to put arguments across at that level.
I think there are lots of lessons from Seattle. I think everyone
agreed that the main reason Seattle failed was not because of
the protesters; it was because the governments could not come
to an agreement. For me, the key lesson was first of all that
there are better ways of engaging Non-Government Organisations
than were found at Seattle. There are ways of channelling energies
in a more productive way so that they do not erupt onto the streets.
If one creates a clear framework for involving NGOs, one sets
up a series of responsibilities for them to adhere to that matches
that with a set of structures to have dialogue with them. That
can be very useful. Secondly, I think the work on conflict diamonds
and on other issues shows that one can build a community of interest
which cuts across borders, for instance on land mines. There are
a whole series of issues where this has been done very effectively—on
debt as well—where one can bring together a coalition of
Non-Governmental Organisations, companies and governments. Governments
can play a very important role both in supplying information,
in lobbying for these things in multilateral organisations, in
lobbying their partners, but also not trying to do all the work
themselves. What NGOs have shown very effectively at Seattle and
at other places is how good they can be at creating a public debate
around issues and raising the salience of an issue within a political
debate to a level which would have been impossible without their
presence. That sort of strategic partnership with NGOs and other
could be a very powerful way of getting messages across. There
are limits to how much governments can do on their own to change
public opinion within this country and also abroad.
6. That implies that NGOs should become almost
an extension of the FCO. That surely endangers their independence?
(Mr Leonard) The metaphor that we use when we are
thinking about public diplomacy is chains of public diplomacy,
where you have lots of different links who have their own objectives,
their own criteria for success, but who work together towards
a greater goal. It is absolutely essential for the functioning
of most NGOs that they maintain that independence, they maintain
their edge and stick to their missions. Equally, it is absolutely
essential for the World Service to have its independence and the
British Council, all in different ways. There is an area where
there is a synergy between people's interests, where they can
work together and where agendas can be hammered out and pursued
within the public debate and within multilateral organisations.
The challenge is to have those sorts of antennae to be able to
find those partners and the skills to build these new coalitions.
It is something that is already starting to happen but I am sure
there is going to be much more of it in the future.
7. It seems you are quite heavily dependent
on this new public diplomacy. There are basically the internet,
IT systems, information, accessible information through the internet.
That is right, is it? Your main instrument would be information
through the internet?
(Mr Leonard) That is one of the other really interesting
challenges for the Foreign Office which has traditionally had
a culture of trading information rather than sharing information.
There are obviously a lot of papers within the Foreign Office
which cannot be released for all sorts of different reasons. I
think it does require a cultural change if one wants to shape
public opinion, if one wants to change the way an issue is discussed
at an international level. One needs to set out an agenda; one
needs to supply information for the people who are trying to put
that case together. That is something which NGOs have been very
good at, getting information to large groups of people who are
interested in a particular issue around the world. What the internet
can do which I think mass communications cannot is have these
large communities of interest who cut across boundaries and who,
within any individual country, would be quite a small group of
people but, because one is linking up with different groups around
the world, one can get momentum on those sorts of issues. That
is also one of the dangers of public debate being distorted and
the public interest being lost. That is why one has to be very
clear about—
8. Occasionally, I have gone to the internet
on a subject I know something about and I have often found what
is on the internet on that subject to be pretty facile and simplistic.
If you depend on public diplomacy based on the internet, you are
going to have a very simplistic and rather facile, superficial
way of dealing with issues and problems.
(Mr Leonard) The internet is a medium like radio,
television and newspapers. It is a way of sharing information
and getting messages across. It is only a small part of that.
Like all those other media, there are some things on it which
are very good, positive and well researched; there are other things
which are completely misleading. The big difference is that a
lot of people can put information on it. What I am suggesting
is to try and link up all of those different tools that we have,
to have a more entrepreneurial foreign service which is actually
interested in building campaigns on issues and behaving in a different
way to the way that it maybe did 15 or 20 years ago. It is something
which is starting to happen organically within not just this foreign
service but a lot of foreign services around the world. Traditionally,
it was something which was done more by countries like Canada
or the Nordic countries in Scandinavia.
9. If you were looking for the best practice
of your kind of approach, where would you look?
(Mr Leonard) There are pockets of excellence in different
countries. Some of the things which are going on in this country
are really very good examples of good practice, like conflict
diamonds, but I think there is a hell of a long way to go. In
Canada, the government has been very good at engaging domestic
public opinion on these sorts of issues and building coalitions
within the country. There is also a lot of very interesting work
being done in Sweden about getting information out to different
people and their use of IT, which is very interesting.
Dr Starkey
10. You spoke about building campaigns. Where
does this shade into interfering in the domestic and political
affairs of other countries? For example, the big issue about greater
integration within Europe. Would not other European Member States
be a bit miffed if a government started to actively be a player
in an internal domestic campaign about whether a given country
should or should not be more closely integrated within the European
Union?
(Mr Leonard) That is where these issues become very
interesting and contentious because traditionally we have had
this notion of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs.
Now, increasingly, there are norms which are being developed at
a global level which different countries sign up to and if they
fail to live up to the rules which they themselves have signed
up to there are ways of interfering with that.
11. Such as what?
(Mr Leonard) The International Criminal Court on human
rights issues and the WTO on trade issues. Increasingly, we are
finding that our interests as a nation are not just determined
by other governments but by citizens in other countries. There
are large grey areas but the work that has been done recently
in trying to persuade tourists to come to Britain and to show
that foot and mouth has not closed the country down is one example
of interfering in other countries' domestic affairs, not interfering
in the same way that it would be to campaign in Denmark in their
referendum campaign, but it is an example of the merging of what
our agenda is as a country and what our national interest is and
the patterns of behaviour in other countries, their perceptions
of us. That is why I think these coalitions are particularly important
because it would be inappropriate for the British government,
for instance, to campaign within another democracy against what
the government is trying to do. If you have NGOs organised on
a global level which are supporting things which are interests
of the British people which we support—for example, on climate
change, on land mines, on human rights or on other sorts of issues—I
do not think it is improper for the government to talk to them,
to collaborate with them, to offer them assistance. We need to
have a much clearer debate about what the limits of that should
be, what is right and proper, and how we manage all of those relationships.
That is the sort of debate which is starting to happen now. We
need to make sure that we do it in a very subtle way.
12. Taking a specific example of land mines,
which I suspect will be relatively non-contentious around here,
what would be the relative role as you would see it of, say, the
Foreign Office and the British Council and the World Service?
(Mr Leonard) It is an important political issue so
the World Service's role within that would be to cover it in an
objective and open way. They certainly should not be broadcasting
propaganda or doing anything at the behest of government, but
it is a legitimate issue for them to talk about. I am sure that
it is an issue which the World Service has covered in all sorts
of different ways in its news programmes in documentary format.
It is important that the World Service should determine its editorial
agenda but, for example, if the World Service were to make a programme
or a series about land mines which was factual, which had all
the different points of view in the debate shown, it might be
possible for the British Council to use some of that material
when it was teaching English to people in particular countries
or teaching English to diplomats in particular countries or to
use that as some kind of teaching aid. It depends what countries
and if it is a country where you do not have large access to radio
or to the internet to broadcast it within its buildings. What
should the role of the British Council be? The British Council,
through its work on human rights and good governance, can promote
these issues, can educate people, can work with NGOs on the ground
and help them build capacity. I am sure DFID can have a role in
that. The Foreign Office, for instance, has a role lobbying governments
who will make the decision ultimately for themselves and within
multilateral organisations but also can have a role in communicating
with public opinion domestically and through speeches and through
their actions ministers can actually put the issue on the agenda
in different fora. I do not think it is illegitimate for these
issues to be raised in other countries. That is why one has to
be quite subtle about the range of issues because there is obviously
a big difference between land mines and an issue which is very
clearly about the internal interests of a Member State, such as
whether Denmark joins the euro or not. There is a very big difference
between those sorts of issues and one needs to make sure one has
the right criteria to make those choices.
Mr Maples
13. Quite a lot of what you are suggesting is
happening already, is it not? We have mentioned the British Council
and the BBC World Service, but also with regional development
agencies which have offices abroad and large companies which have
public relations and public affairs programmes of their own in
other countries and trade organisations. Do you think that quite
a lot of this is happening and you are simply saying it is not
structured or brought together in any way or are you saying not
enough of it is happening at all?
(Mr Leonard) I am saying, first of all, there is a
lot of this happening. Increasingly, there will be more of it
happening. The issues which arise on the agenda are issues which
need these sorts of coalitions because they are no longer within
the power even of national governments, let alone of a single
national government, and that is why NGOs and businesses and governments
are increasingly having to work together. There will be much more
of it and there needs to be more of it. If we look at what the
strategic goals of this country are, those are the sorts of tools
which we are going to have. That is why there is a very active
debate going on with all foreign services about what kind of skills
they need, what kind of management structures they need, how they
define their relationships with others and with the rest of their
domestic governance as well.
14. It is presumably much easier in democracies
than in closed societies. Presumably, the sort of thing you are
talking about is much more useful in Australia, the United States
or Canada than it would be in Belarus or China?
(Mr Leonard) Again, one is trying to do very different
things but one of the major events of last year was in Serbia,
for instance, where a lot of these agencies have been very active
in trying to promote a culture of democracy, trying to get these
sorts of issues discussed and on the agenda. It is incredibly
important, particularly in countries where the relationship with
the government is quite difficult, but we need to maintain a relationship
with the people of the country. Public diplomacy gives you a way
forward. Obviously, it is much more difficult to do in a country
like Iraq which is very closed and where there are not many partners
that one can work with on the ground because the society has been
closed down so much. In a way, that makes it more important if
one is going to have a smooth transition. Also, if one is intervening
militarily in a lot of these countries, it is absolutely essential
that they understand why Britain has a presence there if troops
on the ground are going to be able to operate and be seen as friendly
forces.
15. In your world, would the ambassador to a
particular country have a responsibility to try to coordinate
these things in the country to which he is an ambassador or do
you see this happening at a Whitehall level?
(Mr Leonard) I think at all levels. Increasingly,
the permanent agencies are working together much more effectively
now than they have ever done before. I remember when I started
work on rebranding Britain in 1996, a lot of the people in different
agencies had barely met each other, let alone worked together
and made strategic plans together. I think that is going to happen
increasingly. Secondly, we will have units being formed for particular
purposes, whether it is land mines or conflict diamonds or other
issues, within the Foreign Office, which will try and bring these
issues together within Whitehall. On the ground, I think you will
get increasing coalitions which are coming together around issues
which matter in those particular countries. There will also increasingly
not just be British organisations; there will be multilateral
coalitions coming together. In many of the countries that we are
talking about on many issues, apart from the commercial issues,
we have very similar interests to a lot of our EU partners in
the US, Australia and other countries which are like minded. That
is why this whole notion of changing the way the foreign service
operates here should be seen within a broader context. If we can
create structures that allow us to mesh more effectively with
foreign services in other countries as they change and develop,
that will be very helpful.
Mr Chidgey
16. I can follow the logic of NGOs and the like
being coordinated in the interests of a particular country but
the Department mission statement of the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office is to promote the national interests of the United Kingdom.
I want to take you back to some of your opening remarks, where
you compared public diplomacy with traditional diplomacy. Traditional
diplomacy, in particular in this country, is to promote the interests
of the United Kingdom through the Foreign Office which is accountable
to Parliament, which is in turn accountable to the people of the
country through a democratic process. Do you not find there is
a contradiction between that role, which is very specific and
very clear, and a rather ephemeral public diplomacy which is drawn
from a naturally selecting body who happen to have access to the
internet, who may be or may not be in democratically elected countries?
Is it not the case though, therefore, that the traditional form
of diplomacy has a very clear, specific role and there is no compatibility
in those strategic areas between this public diplomacy which is
rather indefinable?
(Mr Leonard) You have put your finger on the rub of
the issue which is that there is a very clear framework for government
to government diplomacy and there is a very clear framework for
accountability. Unfortunately, the world around that is becoming
more and more complex. Many of the things we want to achieve cannot
be achieved simply within those frameworks because all our societies
are becoming much more diverse. There are not any clear rules
for this new world. I do not think they are incompatible. We have
no option but to use these new tools if we are going to live up
to the Foreign Office's mission statement. The challenge is to
create a way of making sure that these new relationships are transparent,
are open and accountable, that what the Foreign Office does and
what the British government does is appropriate, that there are
channels to make sure that they do defend the public interest
and that they are accountable to Parliament and to the people
of the country through the ballot box and through other means.
We need to make sure that everybody is aware of the new agenda
and that all the different tools of accountability and democracy
are deployed to make sure that the public interest is protected
because the trouble with not embracing this new agenda and not
trying to set out these new rules for governing relationships
between NGOs and governments, between business and governments,
is that these relationships will go on in an unregulated, untransparent
manner and the public interest is much more likely to be undermined.
That is why a lot of the work we have done within the centre has
been to try and set up some of these frameworks.
Mr Rowlands
17. How do you regulate them?
(Mr Leonard) It is not necessarily regulation through
legislation. There are all sorts of different ways of having regulation
through codes of conduct, regulation and transparency. Public
debate around issues can be a way of regulating behaviour as well.
Chairman
18. You have seen the document on which we shall
be examining Sir John Kerr this afternoon. Do you recognise your
new agenda in this document and its projections to 2005?
(Mr Leonard) One of the exciting things about the
document is that there are some excellent examples of that new
agenda in action. Conflict diamonds is the most dramatic one.
There is also a lot of work which needs to be done on precisely
answering Mr Chidgey's point, which is setting out these new rules
which have not really been fully worked through within the system
and which are not understood by the public either. Unless the
public understands what is right and what is wrong and has a clear
set of benchmarks against which to judge the behaviour of the
government, the behaviour of companies and the behaviour of NGOs,
we are going to find it very difficult to move forward. We will
find, as we did over child labour and other issues for instance,
that public opinion can be an unguided missile which sometimes
has unintended consequences. Sometimes, it can even set back agendas
which it is trying to advance.
Mr Rowlands
19. That is because maybe some of these agendas
are minority agendas and are not supported by the majority.
(Mr Leonard) That may very well be true.
Chairman: Mr Leonard, thank you very much on
behalf of the Committee.
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