Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
LORD CARTER
OF COLES
8 FEBRUARY 2006
Q180 Mr Horam: They were never doing
that before.
Lord Carter of Coles: I do not
think it was done as thoroughly as it should have been, no. That
is why I made the recommendation.
Q181 Mr Horam: Even though the Wilton
Review had set up a body to do that?
Lord Carter of Coles: No, if you
look at the workings of the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board, it
was very much something that was very, very high level, with very
broad themes. I was talking more about the issue country-by-country,
the dialogue about what was going on in a country and the effect
of the combined efforts of a large amount of money being spent;
how that impacted on the country and what was each partner bringing
to that?
Q182 Mr Horam: Can you give me an example?
All this is rather general, and something was going wrong. Do
you have some examples in mind of where things were going wrong?
Lord Carter of Coles: I can think
of examples where things change rapidly. Pakistan would be an
interesting example. The British Council, with the security issues
in Pakistan, had to shut its shop front; it could not be there
for security reasons. That was a transitional thing. Its main
activity in Pakistan after 9/11 was in running exams. That is
educationally a very valuable thing, but it was constrained to
some degree in what it could do in its ordinary communication.
One would say, "we would like to get it down the Internet
and things like that"—in a situation like that, would
it be more appropriate for money to have been spent by the BBC
in that market where there was a constraint. It is those sorts
of discussions that are interesting, and it is the whole-country
impact of this total endeavour.
Q183 Mr Horam: The Treasury had a role
in all of this. Was there a concern about the financing of the
British Council, that it was wasting money?
Lord Carter of Coles: No, that
was not a view.
Q184 Mr Horam: So it was all to do with
strategy and not to do with the Treasury concern about whether
you were getting value for money from the British Council?
Lord Carter of Coles: No, it was
never raised with me. The question, "Are we spending all
the money effectively?" was raised with me. It was not a
specific concern about the British Council, no.
Q185 Mr Horam: So your recommendations
are all about having more Foreign Office control over the nitty-gritty,
country-by-country, of what the British Council did.
Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, absolutely,
allocation of resources—not control. I think this is one
point I really want to speak to: it was not control; it was about
better co-ordination.
Q186 Mr Horam: Better co-ordination inside
a country or between how you spend the money between different
countries?
Lord Carter of Coles: Both, because
we are in a very dynamic situation. It is the movement of money
from, in the case of the BBC, eastern Europe into Arab territories
or something like that. There are huge rapid changes going on,
and those do need to be co-ordinated and resources moved around,
and within countries as in the Pakistan example.
Q187 Chairman: In your recommendations
you did not recommend a particular model of control. You said
that the FCO and the British Council should together develop proposals
for an appropriate degree of oversight, and how the FCO and British
Council dialogue might better operate in practice. Why did you
not recommend a particular way forward yourself?
Lord Carter of Coles: I suppose,
Chairman, going back to an earlier point, I wanted to publish
the report. This is something that—
Q188 Chairman: Are you telling me then
that there was no agreement?
Lord Carter of Coles: No. There
was broad agreement. Then, after that, we wanted to be pretty
clear how it would work. The detail of how these two organisations
are going to sit down between themselves—are they going
to meet once a month or once a quarter and what the agenda should
be, is something they should settle.
Q189 Chairman: Do you have a view yourself,
though, as to how this relationship between the dialogue between
the FCO and the British Council should be developed?
Lord Carter of Coles: I think
the shape of it, yes, in the sense of establishing the priorities
in terms of, first, which countries we spend money on. That is
a very important dialogue. Then, within country, it is a question
of the relevant channels to be used, and then very, very critically,
what is the effect of it. People need to sit down and look at
that in any performance management system and say, "we surveyed
the opinions of people in this country and we have spent all this
money, aiming off for big events, and actually we have improved"
or "our rating is going down". It is that dialogue I
was keen to see people having.
Q190 Mr Maples: Whenever we go anywhere
we try to see the British Council and sometimes we come away with
an impression that a very few people are doing a fantastic job,
and then sometimes we come away wondering what the hell they are
sending people to do. I may have missed it in your report, but
have you formed any view of whether, as taxpayers, we are getting
good value for money out of the British Council and/or the BBC
World Service for that matter? I think we are happier, probably,
with the World Service than the British Council. Perhaps that
is not really part of your . . .
Lord Carter of Coles: No, it was
not part of—obviously, because I went to look. When we spoke
to other countries, everybody was envious that we had the British
Council and World Service, and it was quite interesting comparing,
so from that point of view there was recognition. Are we getting
good value? The answer is that generally we are. How you would
measure good value is the thing that I was exercised by. I was
very keen to recommend that we did return to surveying what people
thought of us in those countries, and to start consistently over
time to do that and to try and understand which interventions
the British Council and the World Service made actually had a
better effect. One of the problems is that we do not know—in
the case of the British Council we know the number of people coming
to British universities, the number of examinations, the number
of visits and the numbers visiting the website and things like
that—we need to start measuring those over time and then
try and understand what drives them.
Q191 Mr Maples: Are you aware of any
study that has been done on value for money of the British Council?
Lord Carter of Coles: No.
Q192 Mr Maples: You seem to be suggesting
that some work along those lines should be done in the future.
Lord Carter of Coles: It is something
that needs looking at. Part of designing this was to have a dialogue
that was based less on assertion and more on fact.
Q193 Mr Maples: Do you not think that
the British Council is a hangover from the cold war? Now, with
modern communications and the multiplicity of broadcasting channels
and the availability of information on the Internet, do you really
think it is necessary to have hundreds of people working in the
Soviet Union in the British Council, putting on rather obscure
plays that a few people go to watch in English and a library that
hardly anybody ever seems to visit?
Lord Carter of Coles: People did
put in the Hamlet in Alexandria question; it was something we
thought a lot about. If you look at the amount of money spent
on those endeavours, they are relatively small. The big value-added
services to me of the British Council were, first of all, obviously,
teaching the English language.
Q194 Mr Maples: Is that not done by commercial
enterprises?
Lord Carter of Coles: It is, and
I think that the Council needs to continually monitor if that
service can be provided by people. If you look at markets they
are withdrawing from in Japan, they have left Osaka and now that
is done by the private sector. If you look at the expansion of
teaching English in the world, their market share has declined
because the private sector providers have done that. In benchmarking
terms I think there is a role, but it needs to be continually
reviewed. That is a question that should be looked at all the
time. At this moment, in the places where they do it very well,
it is self-financing and also it does help our cause for low cost.
If it became a burden, we would have to suggest that people looked
at it again.
Q195 Mr Maples: When the BBC World Service
Chief Executive appeared before us, we heard that they are financing
their Arab television service to the tune of £20 million,
which is pretty small money world TV, and they are having to cut
down on services in all sorts of other countries to do that. There
is an argument whether those other services were necessary, but
I also wonder whether we should not just shift £20 million
from the British Council budget to the World Service to do it.
Do you think the British Council would—do you think it would
really, really notice the absence of that £20 million that
the British Council—
Lord Carter of Coles: I think
so, yes. I think they would notice it.
Q196 Mr Maples: I did not say would "they"
notice it; I said would "we" notice it. They would notice
it, I am sure.
Lord Carter of Coles: Whether
"big" here is—you would have to take chunks off.
If you look at where the money goes, it is education—you
would have to take £5 million, say, if you split it four
ways—say 5 million on four things. I think it would just
leave a hole in educational recruitment in this country, which
would be detrimental; so I think it is value-added. I think the
better solution is for the BBC to re-prioritise, as you suggested,
and take the 20 million out of that.
Q197 Ms Stuart: Can I pursue something
you started with. Whilst it was no part of your remit, you must
have formed an opinion during the course of your work. If I were
to ask you now what is the point of the British Council, what
would you say?
Lord Carter of Coles: We had quite
a debate about this. I think probably its greatest contribution
is in education, in getting people to come to British universities
and into higher education; and it is a major effort. I do not
want to answer by default, but if the British Council did not
do it, somebody would have to do it, and I think they do it in
a skilful way. The teaching of English we have talked about: it
is a valuable thing, but given alternatives it would not command
a large public subsidy in my view, so that is important. In terms
of culture, it spends 25 million on the arts. There are differing
views. My own view is that it is very useful in positioning this
country. If we look at the money the French spend, for instance,
on their schools abroad and the great cultural drive in China,
it costs significantly more and I think has a lesser effect. A
cultural positioning helps the country, and I think then it pushes
through into things like tourism. If, on the other hand, someone
were to suggest spending £50 million or £60 million
a year on culture, that would be a harder thing to defend.
Q198 Ms Stuart: That raises two further
questions. If you make comparisons with the French, I do not think
these are true comparisons because France is the only driver for
the French language on the international scene, whereas we are
not the only driver for English. Given that the British Council
even thinks displaying the Union Jack is something terribly retrograde,
there is a problem. Much more importantly—because part of
your recommendations in terms of looking at how the board is appointed,
the roles of the Permanent Secretary and the Foreign Office—if
the British Council's primary function, for which the British
taxpayer does receive benefit, is in the area of education, there
is not in that sense the need for once-removed from government,
as you could argue for the World Service. What is your preferred
notion or model of how the British Council should be accountable?
Lord Carter of Coles: I have asked
myself a lot of questions about the status of NDPBs and this arm's
length question. In the case of the British Council, its arm's
length position in certain cases has proved useful. It lets it
have that necessary distance at some difficult times in certain
countries. That has stood us in good stead, and I could not see
any benefit in removing that. It is a nice piece of positioning,
and it does contribute to the most important thing, which is for
the World Service and the British Council that trust rating, which
would be very hard to recreate if it were too close.
Q199 Ms Stuart: Do you really think it
is comparable? The BBC is the provider of the news and therefore
needs to be independent; the British Council is the conveyor of
British art and language.
Lord Carter of Coles: I do. My
own view is probably the same thing exactly: the BBC is the same
thing in a way—the airtime—it is British culture,
art and language. I think they are doing the same thing, and that
sense of independence is very important.
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