PUBLIC DIPLOMACY BOARD
Letter to the Chairman of the Committee
from the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State,
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, dated
20 April 2006
Dear Chairman,
I am writing, on behalf of the Foreign Secretary,
as the Chair of the new Public Diplomacy Board. Thank you for
your recent report on Public Diplomacy. I read it with interest—it
is a welcome contribution to this developing area of policy. You
raise a number of key issues, to which we will be responding fully,
in the normal way. But, I wanted to write to you now on one particular
issue raised in your report.
I was pleased that you agreed with Lord Carter's
recommendation that a new, more focussed public diplomacy Board
should be set up to drive public diplomacy strategy and measure
performance. Like you, I believe that such a Board can operate
effectively without compromising the editorial independence of
the BBC World Service or the operational independence of the British
Council. This is reflected in the Board's Terms of Reference.
We have now set this recommendation in hand.
And, I thought this would be a good time to update the Committee
on what we are doing. I chaired the first meeting of the new Board
on 30 March. Alongside the permanent members (representatives
from the FCO, British Council and, sitting as an observer, the
BBC World Service), we welcomed two independent members—Chris
Powell as Vice Chair and Simon Anholt as the performance measurement
expert. Both were recruited through open competition and bring
a wealth of wider experience, a fresh perspective and rigour to
the Board's work.
I am confident that the Board will make a real
difference to the impact of our public diplomacy. It will set
a list of priority countries and objectives within those countries.
In each country, it will ask the partners to agree a comprehensive,
medium-term public diplomacy strategy. It will ensure that partners
allocate resources accordingly, and will evaluate and monitor
the impact of their activities over time. By way of a test case,
we had a useful discussion on the future Public Diplomacy strategy
for China at the first meeting.
The next step for the Board is a meeting in
May at which we will continue our discussions on China and discuss
our emerging plan for Pakistan. Following that, the Board will
have an away day to discuss in broadest terms how it should operate
and where it should focus its efforts. In parallel, we will shortly
issue a tender for consultants to work up a more stringent approach
to monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of our, and our
partners', public diplomacy work.
This is a fast developing and exciting area
of work. I will keep you updated as we move forward.
Yours sincerely,
David Triesman
The Lord Triesman of Tottenham
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