Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-235)
LORD CARTER
OF COLES
8 FEBRUARY 2006
Q220 Mr Keetch: Where the danger comes
is if they start to go down their own—
Lord Carter of Coles: You get
fragmentation, and then it is government money going in lots of
different ways; and probably it needs to be focused and brigaded.
Q221 Mr Keetch: Do you think there is
a waste of resources across UK plc generally, because we certainly
see, as we travel around the world, the Scottish Executive doing
things, trying to promote Scotland—which I have no objection
to at all, but nevertheless in a way that does not seem to be
beneficial to UK plc generally?
Lord Carter of Coles: I think
a little more co-ordination would not be out of order.
Q222 Mr Keetch: Would you like to elaborate
as to what you think might be—
Lord Carter of Coles: No, I would
not. That is the point. Why people do not do it is because they
think that is not going to work for them. You have got to make
these things work for them, and then people will use it.
Q223 Mr Horam: You propose, Lord Carter,
a new unit to measure performance and monitoring. You say you
want this because the existing measures are very standardised.
Would it not have been easier to say to the British Council, "get
your act together; get some standardised things, and we will be
watching you do that", rather than proposing a new unit.
I worry again that it will be just top-heavy bureaucracy.
Lord Carter of Coles: I certainly
did not want to create a bureaucracy. I hope it is going to be
a very small unit.
Q224 Mr Horam: It will still be a unit—
Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, but
the alternative was—there has to be somewhere where the
information is obtained; where they make sure the information
is coming and presents it in a codified form, and has the information
from differing sources. Whilst the British Council is standardising
its stuff, as is the World Service, and we know what the FCO and
other departments spend, it is getting it into a format on a country-by-country
basis.
Q225 Mr Horam: Can the British Council
not do that? Is it incapable because they have accountants and
people—
Lord Carter of Coles: It can do
it for the British Council, but I do not think it could do it
for the BBC World Service.
Q226 Mr Horam: You would expect them
to do it as well and have two lots of people doing it.
Lord Carter of Coles: That is
right, and so all this unit does is co-ordinate all those and
put them together.
Q227 Mr Horam: It sounds like an extra
piece of bureaucracy to me, taking more money—
Lord Carter of Coles: No, because
if you believe, as I do, in performance management, they have
got to get the information somewhere in a format that those who
can influence it can read it and interrogate it. I think that
for £600 million, four people probably pulling some information
together.
Q228 Mr Horam: I do not know about four!
Lord Carter of Coles: I am saying
four—I do not want to tie people's hands, but I would hope
it would not be too many more than that. Actually getting that
information together for the size of the spend, placing it before
the decision-makers in a format that is useful and which can be
gone back to time after time to hold them accountable, I hope
will prove useful.
Q229 Mr Keetch: On page 17 you have come
up with this lovely expression "dumping code" for allocating
resources. Do you think the FCO manage that in a financial structure
way very well or do you think there are improvements that could
be made there to ensure hat this money is well spent? As you say,
a lot of money is being spent out there. We do not always see
the direct results and direct benefits of that.
Lord Carter of Coles: No, I think
one should start measurement and asking for these things. People
pay more attention to it, and that is hopefully what will happen,
as people say, "you have these many people working on this
country and we are spending this much money", just as one
would say to the British Council or the World Service, "We
are spending this money; what are we getting?" I would hope
that the same unit would say to the FCO, "you have got these
people; what are they actually doing?"
Q230 Mr Keetch: You mentioned earlier
that Britain is the envy of other countries because of the World
Service and the British Council. Do you get the impression that
the money we spend on public diplomacy across the board is regarded
by our partners as money well spent for Britain, and do you get
the impression that other countries appear to be able to spend
their money more precisely and better than we do?
Lord Carter of Coles: I think
other countries think we have a good buy. The trust rating of
the BBC is a real national resource, and that is invaluable. On
the differentiation point, the council is regarded as—the
"of Britain but not in the government" point is well
positioned. There are interesting differences. The Americans take
the view that it is broadcasting and scholarships is how you should
conduct public diplomacy, because they feel they can measure them
much better. There are different ways of coming at this, but I
think on balance ours has the right mixture.
Q231 Mr Keetch: Would that be something
that we could learn from the Americans, and are there other countries
that we could look at? Ms Stuart pointed out earlier that we have
the benefit of the English language, which other people are promoting
as well as us, even the Americans. Are there things that we could
learn from other countries?
Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, I think
so. As I say, the Americans have been a lot faster in and out
of things and being more responsive. If you look at other players,
though, the French do spend quite a lot of money but spend it
differently, and I do not think to as great effect as we spend
our money. The Germans spend some money but nothing like the same
amount. There are not a lot of people that are big in public diplomacy.
Q232 Chairman: To pull it altogether,
your report recommends that your strategy and performance monitoring
arrangements should be introduced as part of the budgeting exercise
for 2006-07; that full data collection should begin from April
2007; and that arrangements should be reviewed in 2008 with consideration
of more radical options if necessary. You also leave open the
future of Wilton Park. Clearly, there are certain intangibles
and question marks in the next two or three years. Do you think
it is likely that you are going to be called back to carry out
another review, or a review of a review, or somebody else is going
to be called in to do something more radical with this area?
Lord Carter of Coles: Chairman,
I would hope that the information that starts to come up to the
people responsible for this will let them take those decisions
now. One of the problems with this was actually getting information,
and getting in a format that you could come to—how many
people were engaged in the FCO; exactly how much money was spent
in Pakistan and how much money was spent in this country. Getting
that together and building in information system—I would
hope that the way forward becomes much more obvious to those who
are responsible for us. I would hope not to be asked back—
Q233 Chairman: But who is responsible?
Lord Carter of Coles: I suppose
the Foreign Secretary is responsible to Parliament.
Q234 Chairman: Ultimately therefore this
is not a matter for the British Council or the Public Diplomacy
Strategy Board or all these other structures that are going to
be established or are presently in existence. Is that what you
are saying?
Lord Carter of Coles: I wanted
to be a bit clearer on the hard wiring which ran from the Foreign
Secretary to these organisations when he can be called to Parliament
to account for this, and I think some of the linkages historically
have not been as clear as they needed to be.
Q235 Mr Horam: Having done all this work
and made some interesting international comparisons in relation
to the French, the Germans and the Americans, did you come away
with the view, "if I had my way, I would double the money
on this sort of thing because it is so valuable". We know
that in the modern world the brand image of a country is very
important. Did you think that, or did you think that this is about
right, or whatever?
Lord Carter of Coles: Actually,
I did think about that. I thought this was well-resourced. If
you look at the United States expenditure on broadcasting, it
is about $560 million or $600 million. Relatively, also it being
a world power, they spend per capita less. We are well resourced
in this area, but we get good value for it.
Chairman: Thank you very much. We are
very grateful to you for coming along and helping us to begin
to understand a little bit better the complexities of the area.
We will be producing our report in the near future on the Annual
Report of the FCO, and no doubt we will touch on this in that
process.
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