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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1371-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE ANNUAL REPORT 2005-2006
Wednesday 12 July 2006 MR NIGEL CHAPMAN and MS ALISON WOODHAMS SIR DAVID GREEN KCMG, MR MARTIN DAVIDSON and MS MARGARET MAYNE Evidence heard in Public Questions 109-209
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday 12 July 2006 Members present Mike Gapes, in the Chair Mr Fabian Hamilton Mr John Horam Mr Eric Illsley Mr Paul Keetch Andrew Mackinlay Sandra Osborne Mr Greg Pope Mr Ken Purchase Sir John Stanley Ms Gisela Stuart ________________ Memorandum submitted by BBC World Service
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Nigel Chapman, Director, and Ms Alison Woodhams, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Finance, BBC World Service, gave evidence. Q109 Chairman: Can I welcome Nigel Chapman and Alison Woodhams from the BBC World Service. Thank you for coming along again. I would like to place on record our thanks for when we visited yesterday and saw your operation at work. We have got an hour, and I am sorry for the slight delay getting you in, and we think there may be a vote, but we are not sure, in about an hour's time. Can I begin by asking you about the significant changes that you have introduced in the BBC World Service since last year? How have you dealt with that? How has the Service coped with that? How successful have these changes been? Mr Chapman: I think the Service has coped extremely well with them. It is quite a remarkable story that in a year when you make the biggest changes in the 70 years of history of the World Service, that that should coincide with an audience of 163 million people per week, which is a record-breaking audience, and also a lot of innovative additions to the web and other services that we are already doing. I think we have managed to ride a tiger of change and also strong performance in the same year, which is a rare thing to do. Q110 Chairman: There was a lot of opposition to the scrapping of some of the language services and certainly some of your staff must have been very upset. How have they dealt with that? How have they reacted to that now? Mr Chapman: I think change of this kind, Chairman, is very difficult. I would like to place on record my thanks and the thanks of the BBC as whole and the thanks of audiences across Eastern Europe and Thailand and Kazakhstan for the services that were put out until very recently. They were high-quality services. Change like this is not easy and we have had to be painstakingly careful about making sure that the staff are treated properly, that we are as generous as possible in terms of redundancy payments, and in trying to find them other jobs, and so on. I think we have done that very well. The teams have worked very hard to do that. It has not of course lessened the pain for some of those individuals. Change is very difficult and changes in an organisation with a 70-year history where those services have been on the air, in some cases, for the greater part of those 70 years is difficult. Putting aside the human impact-and I am not minimising it by saying that-I think we have won the argument that on balance in a fixed set of resources, you have to make difficult choices and it is a better use of grant-in-aid to improve and really burnish the services for the Middle East through Arabic television, improving new media, improving marketing, improving distribution across the world. That is, on balance, a better use of those resources than to carry on investing in the places where we were investing in before. Q111 Mr Horam: You are part of the BBC's Global News Division and there are three parts to that. There is the World Service, which is you, and then there is BBC World television and BBC Monitoring. Mr Chapman: Yes, that is right. Q112 Mr Horam: That is an historic separation. Does it still make sense in an evolving media context? Mr Chapman: They are not separate in the sense of managerial organisation in that they are working more closely together than ever before. In editorial terms, in making sure that we present to the world through three different media a coherent picture of the big themes and issues, I would say that the BBC is getting its act together in a way that makes it more powerful rather than less powerful. Having said that, you also have to accept that the funding streams are different. The funding stream for BBC World television is a commercial funding stream. It is advertising and sponsorship and not from grant-in-aid and that has been the historic position on BBC World ever since it was launched in the early 1990s. Q113 Mr Horam: Can you see this is changing? Given, as you say, you are trying to present a common editorial line, which is admirable, and the management is now closer and closer, as you say, does it make any sense to have these rather artificial barriers between what is commercial and allows advertising and what does not? Mr Chapman: First of all, I need to say that it is not part of my responsibility to run BBC World. Q114 Mr Horam: I appreciate that. Mr Chapman: We need to be careful about the mantle I am wearing in this discussion. In some ways that is a question for government, not a question for me. Q115 Mr Horam: But looking at it from your point of view does it really make sense? You are going into television, I understand? Mr Chapman: Yes, but into Arabic television, and that is going to be funded by grant-in-aid. That is quite clear; it is on the same model as the language services are in radio and the new media activities are as well. Q116 Mr Horam: Would you not like to go into commercially funded television? Mr Chapman: Not for language services, I would not, broadly speaking, because I do not think they are going to work. In the case of Arabic television, the BBC went down that whole road in 1994 to 1996 in a commercial partnership. Q117 Mr Horam: But that was a partnership not just taking adverts, was it not? Mr Chapman: It was both a partnership for distribution and taking adverts. That got you into all sorts of difficulties about editorial policy, the stories you were going to run, how compatible they were with the people who were funding you. I think one of the good things about the current proposed Arabic funding is that it is grant-in-aid so you do not get into those issues. Chairman: Can I keep the Arabic questions to a little bit later. Q118 Mr Horam: Looking to the future, do you see this division being maintained? Mr Chapman: I do not see any sign at the moment that BBC World television in English is suddenly going to become grant-in-aid funded. As far as one can tell, I think that it is going to remain a commercial channel. That is the position the BBC is taking. It has got a business plan to break even by the end of the decade and it is making significant progress towards that and that is the plan we have. There is no plan to suddenly reverse all that and start asking for public funds to fund BBC World. Q119 Sir John Stanley: Like all media organisations, you are understandably transfixed to a degree by the number of people who are listening to your services and you are, in part, being driven by the numbers. I see that you are trying to get the BBC global reach up for international news services from 190 million to over 250 million by 2010. The question I put to you is is there not a danger in chasing audience numbers that the World Service is losing sight of what has always been and remains a critical part of its remit, which is to provide access for those people who are living in totalitarian or semi-totalitarian regimes where suppression of the media is the order of the day, where they have no national access to any form of independent news information. Is there not a danger that that very, very important requirement is being lost sight of? Mr Chapman: I can see hypothetically, Sir John, why that might be a danger but it is not a danger while I am Director of the World Service because I take particularly strongly my responsibility to broadcast to areas of the world which are most starved of free access to information. I was particularly pleased to see, for instance, that last year, the first time we have been able to get data on our performance in Burma, over 25 per cent of the population are listening every week-six million people. I was really thrilled about that because if ever I can think of a place where the World Service needs to be broadcasting to, it is somewhere like Burma. I measure success partly by the number of people who consume the services but also what they think of them. Reputation is as important as reach and in reputational terms if you look at all the data that we measure-and this is done by independent companies, not by the BBC-we are the leading international broadcaster in most of the markets that we measure, for things like objectivity, trustworthiness, relevance to the audience. Those qualitative values, if you like, are as important in assessing your success as the sheer number of people who use you. If we start to see a deterioration in those performance indicators, even if it meant we got lots more people using us, that would not be a satisfactory story. That would be the danger you are talking about. I must do everything I can to prevent that happening. Q120 Mr Keetch. Can I ask Mr Chapman about change because one of the reasons why the BBC World Service is hugely respected is that it has a certain constancy. Can I ask a question that might seem very trivial but is important to many of your listeners and that is about the theme you have. There has been huge controversy on domestic Radio Four about the cancellation of their UK theme. Are there any changes planned to Lilliburlero? Mr Chapman: No, in a word. Q121 Mr Keetch: And you can assure us that Lily Balero will stay part of your theme whilst you are Director? Mr Chapman: Absolutely because it is part of the brand. It is not the only theme we have. We have all sorts of different musical stings and themes that go in and out of programmes, but Lilliburlero is played regularly on the English network and it is a bit of a clarion call for listeners. Their ears prick up and they know this is the World Service that they are listening to. I am not sure what advantage there would be for me to scrap Lilliburlero. Mr Keetch: I am very grateful to you for saying that, thank you. Q122 Chairman: At which point we will move on to FCO strategy. I do not know if the FCO has a strategy for this but we will not go there. Was the World Service consulted when the FCO produced its new strategy paper on Active Diplomacy for a Changing World which was published in March this year? Mr Chapman: I can remember seeing drafts of it and I can remember having the opportunity to comment on it in terms of the broad strategic objectives. Q123 Chairman: When you saw the final version were you surprised there were only two references to the BBC World Service in the whole document, one on page 42 and one on page 47? Mr Chapman: Now you draw it to my attention, Chairman, it would always be nice to see more references to the World Service than two. In terms of the broad strategic outlines and priorities which I have in front of me, it seems to me the World Service has got a pretty big role to play in many of them, not all of them because it is not appropriate but in many of them. I think we have a role to play in enabling, for instance, the world to be made safer from terrorism, improving governance and sustainable development. I think a strong media source of information for people in many societies helps that to happen, so I do think we have a central role to play. Q124 Chairman: Does this strategy paper have any major implications for you in the way you work? Mr Chapman: I do not think it would lead to some sort of fundamental realignment of our priorities, no. We are having regular conversations with the FCO about broad strategic priorities. I have said this before, I always define it as where in the world we should broadcast and how, ie by what media is the most appropriate, but what we broadcast, the content, is entirely the business of the BBC and the World Service. I think all parties accept the writing and the spirit of that writing in the agreement that we have that it is not appropriate for any government or any organisation, not least the FCO, to interfere in that. I think it is quite legitimate to have conversations about strategic priorities. We had conversations about strategic priorities when we decided to make the changes we made, which we announced last October, so I think there is a proper dialogue going on about that. It seems quite appropriate to me. Q125 Mr Purchase: I want to explore a little further on the question of "what". During the Second World War the BBC played a very significant, indeed crucial part in winning the War. It may be thought in some regards now, although it is very different in nature, that we are involved in a serious worldwide conflict. Does that in any way influence what the BBC would take as its brief in broadcasting to different parts of the world? Mr Chapman: Can I just say you use the analogy of the Second World War, but I think when you look back at the history of the World Service one of the things that really stands out loud and clear is the World Service through the Second World War broadcast good news or bad news of our allied advances. It was truthful and accurate about what was going on. Not everybody would have liked that but that is one of its great strengths. In my view, in a world of polarisation, conflict and great distrust, it is even more important than ever to present a balanced picture around the great events that are going on in the world. So the notion, for instance, that it is right and proper for us to present only one side in a time of conflict seems to me to be fundamentally mistaken. It is even more important when there is conflict, distrust and polarisation to be independent, accurate and fair-minded and to present a diversity of view. That is absolutely at the heart of what we believe editorially. In places of conflict-and I can think particularly of what is going on in Sri Lanka where there is a great deal of conflict-I get many emails from people complaining about our coverage one way or the other but I know for a fact that we hear from people who support the Tamil Tigers and we hear from people who support and represent the Government in Sri Lanka. That is absolutely appropriate and that is the rule on which we operate and we should operate on that across the piece in terms of reflecting diversity of views, being evenly balanced, and especially so in times of conflict. Our history says that has been one of our greatest strengths over the years. Q126 Mr Purchase: I have no recollection at all of the BBC in the Second World War in any way reporting anything that could be thought of as joyous for the enemy and indeed the BBC was seen as a major part of our war effort, not just to cheer ourselves up, but in fact as a weapon. I put to you that there are certain circumstances in the world where we may as well be at war in a different way. Would you see the BBC then as being part of the allied effort to win such a conflict or not? Mr Chapman: The best way it can be part of an allied effort to win a conflict would be by keeping true to the values that run through the heart of it. The moment it starts moving down a value chain which is partial and selective, untruthful, biased and partisan, it completely loses its way. Nobody would trust it. Nobody would want to listen to it. What impact could it have in the world? That is my case. Q127 Chairman: Order, order. The witness is here to answer questions; Members are not. Can I take you to another area which has developed in the last year which is the Public Diplomacy Review that was carried out by the Government. As you know, we produced a report on that a few months ago. Do you think this new Public Diplomacy Board that has been established will lead to any changes in way the World Service operates in terms of co-ordination of public diplomacy activity or not? Mr Chapman: I think it will lead to some changes in the sense that I think everybody sitting round the table together-the British Council, Foreign Office, ourselves-is going to lead to better co-ordination and better understanding of the role that each party has. I do not think it is going to lead to a huge fundamental shift and I do not think it should lead to a fundamental shift in resources and priorities, but I do think it is legitimate to sit round together and if we are spending all this public money on public diplomacy, are we absolutely clear that we are spending it in the right places in the right way. That seems a perfectly legitimate thing to do and you are only going to have those conversations if you are sitting round the table together. Q128 Chairman: You say there is no fundamental shift in resources and priorities but clearly there is not much point in having a review of public diplomacy unless there are going to be some changes. What part has the Foreign and Commonwealth Office played in the formation of your current five-year strategy and how you are going forward? Mr Chapman: As I said earlier Chairman, in the 2010 strategy we had extensive conversations with the Foreign Office about that. In terms of the closing of services and the opening of new services, we did a thorough review against a certain number of criteria which were, broadly, geo-political importance, the extent of free and independent information and audience impact for every single one of the language services. We shared that with the Foreign Office and we came to a coincidence of view which is that we wanted to close certain services and keep the vast majority open. That seemed to me a sensible way of working together. That work predated the Public Diplomacy Board and that is work that is going on at our regular quarterly meetings and annual ministerial meetings as part of the web and weft of how we work together. Q129 Chairman: So it is too early to judge whether the Public Diplomacy Board is going to have a significant impact? Mr Chapman: It is too early but what you would hope would come out of it, standing back now not as a World Service Director but somebody who is concerned about spending all that public money, you would be looking for alignment, definitely in terms of geographical priorities, it strikes me. It would be pretty strange if one organisation is saying it is really important that we spend more money and have greater impact in the Middle East and the Islamic world and then another organisation is spending loads of money in other places and is not realigning its effort and energy to broadly fit within those strategic priorities. Otherwise you end up with three or four different strategic priorities that do not mesh together. That does not mean that each organisation does not have its own job to do but you do need, I think, to be aware of the overall picture and make the thing fit, absolutely. Q130 Ms Stuart: I am getting greatly concerned about whether there is a conflict here between what the Foreign Office does (and in the last evidence session we took evidence from the Foreign Office on its Annual Report) and where you are. Clearly the strength of the World Service is that it regards itself as independent and impartial and factually based but at the same time they are public funds from the British taxpayer. For you to be able to position yourself, you need to have clear idea of where the Foreign Office regards British national interests. Do you have a sense for how the Foreign Office defines "British national interests"? Mr Chapman: I have a strong sense of their overall strategic priorities and I also have a strong sense in geographical terms, and this is all relative of course, of parts of the world which are more important than others. I suppose that is my best answer to your question. Therefore, in terms of my work and the World Service's work, on a strategic level we can have sensible conversations about whether we should be broadcasting more here or less there or in different ways or whatever. At the end of the day we do broadcasting, we do news and information, and other people do other things, and all I can do is make sure looking objectively, if I can put it like this, first of all, that I am comfortable about the broadcasting case. Stand back and ask is there a broadcasting case for a presence in a particular country. It happens that if you look objectively at the world it would be pretty odd to start arguing that we would like to spend less money in the Middle East and Islamic world at the moment. I do not see how intellectually or rationally you could come to that conclusion. It seems to me what we have been trying to do over the last year and a half/two years is in tune with the broad geographical emphases the Foreign Office want. That seems to be quite rational and logical and I do not have a problem with it. Q131 Ms Stuart: The reason I am troubled is because you have got the Foreign Office objectives, were I personally am not entirely clear they have sufficiently defined British national interests, and two of the key vehicles of public diplomacy are the World Service and the British Council. The British Council have got equal worries about the definition of its purpose. For you the question as you sit in trying to define your purpose, is there are some areas where you can measure your successes much more easily; as you say, how many people listen to you. You go to Burma and a quarter of the population listens so you can say we have an impact. You must have a sense of how easy it is for you to define your purpose in relation to those other parts of the jigsaw. Do you find it easy or are there things which both the Foreign Office and British Council could do which would make it easier for you to define where you fit in, or are you comfortable with the current paradigm? Mr Chapman: I am broadly comfortable with it and I will give you an example. One of their objectives is to promote sustainable development and poverty reduction, underpinned by human rights, democracy, good governance, and protection of the environment. That is objective number six. I would argue that at the heart of good governance is strong, independent media and access to reliable sources of information. I cannot really conceive of a society that is going to develop better without that as one of the cornerstones of its developmental programme. If in those societies people are listening to the World Service, they have got a standard against which to judge their own media, they have got reliable sources of information, they can make better sense of the world than they could before, then we are indirectly-and it is not something I say to my journalists every day go out and create good governance in the world-aiding and helping that to happen. Therefore, that is how our job as a broadcaster of trusted and reliable information fits into an objective like that. It fits quite comfortably, in my view. Q132 Mr Illsley: Mr Chapman, the World Service last year reached a record weekly radio audience of 163 million. Mr Chapman: That is correct. Q133 Mr Illsley: You pointed out in your own memorandum that audiences fell back in Bangladesh, Egypt and Pakistan. Is there any particular reason for that? Mr Chapman: There are different reasons in different places. The audience in Bangladesh has always been volatile. It went down quite a lot after the Iraq War, it then came back up again and it then went down again. What we are finding there is that, partly through the impact of television, people are listening every month but they are not listening every week, and that is a weekly figure that you quoted there so they are not being counted, they are falling off the edge, and we have got to get them to listen more often. The second issue about Bangladesh is distribution. We need to be on FM distribution in Bangladesh. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be able to enable the people of Bangladesh to be able to listen to the World Service in good, strong, clear sound, as in so many capital cities and other parts of the world they now can. We have been in conversation with the government there. We have put forward a plan to try and enable FM distribution to take place and at the moment we are working on it. It is slow progress and I would just like to see it happen. In Egypt, the fall was a marginal amount. I think you have got to look at performance in the Middle East increasingly in a tri-media way-television, radio and new media together-and that is what will be possible obviously in a year's time when the Arabic TV service is launched. In Pakistan the reason why we lost some audience was because we lost a critical FM partnership because the regulator decided the partner was not abiding by the local regulatory framework. We are in conversations with the regulator about that and I hope we will be in a position where we can reinstitute that relationship in the not-too-distant future and therefore the numbers will hopefully go back up again. Q134 Mr Illsley: So, by and large, it is mainly technical reasons as opposed to --- Mr Chapman: Yes. Q135 Mr Illsley: Any there any other areas where audience numbers are falling back? Mr Chapman: No, in all other parts of the world they are going up. They are going up in Africa, they are going up in large parts of Asia, sometimes because of better distribution and sometimes because I think people are turning to the BBC at times of regional and local conflict. I think there is a wider point which is that a lot of our listeners and would-be listeners are turning to the BBC because they want to try and make sense of some very complex forces going on in the world, some quite disturbing forces often, and they look to the BBC as a source of that understanding. The overall geo-political climate in which we are living is helping us to grow audiences, too. Q136 Mr Illsley: Just moving on to content and in particular in relation to the African audiences, I am aware that you have experienced rises in audiences in key African markets, as it says here. The research from the Governors' Consultative Group found that some respondents were talking about the World Service having a Western attitude referring to Africa as "a problem" and that this was a particular problem amongst younger first-time listeners. How would you respond to that? Would you accept that view? Mr Chapman: I think there is always a risk in covering Africa that the programmes can be dominated by conflict, war, poverty and human misery. Anybody who goes to Africa-and I have the pleasure of going quite regularly-knows that it is a much more varied and diverse story than that and there are lots of very positive elements in Africa. In terms of our journalism agenda, it is very, very important to reflect those-the economic changes, business changes, the impact of debt relief. There are lots of issues I can think about at the moment that would be positive stories and it is important that our journalists do not become obsessed about the latest civil war or the latest development in some long-running conflict. Having said that, they have still got to cover those things, too. So there is a risk, yes. I do not think it is a particularly big risk but you have got to keep on watching out all the time. If audiences sense that you are not being fair to the country which you are reporting about then they are less likely to want to listen to you and they will think you are less trust-worthy, so you need to be careful. But I do not think it is a deeply ingrained issue. Q137 Mr Illsley: Is there anything that your international competitors are doing that you think you ought to be doing or anything they are doing that you feel might be better than the World Service, or do you think the World Service stands amongst its competitors pretty well? Mr Chapman: I think it stands amongst its competitors pretty well. You are talking about Africa there in particular. In terms of FM distribution, we have been second to none in acquiring transmitters or partners to enable us to be heard properly, loudly and clearly, and that is one of the reasons why the figures in Africa keep on going up and up and up every year. In terms of the specialist journalism that we do in Africa, I think we can hold our heads very, very high indeed. Q138 Mr Horam: Can I come in on this point. I was interested in what you said about the problems of Africa and you did answer the point by saying you thought the Consultative Group was really saying you were perhaps overstressing the problems of Africa. I also got a sense from what they said that the respondents in Africa were really saying you had a rather Western attitude, ie, it was not just a question of you portraying Africa as a problem but also a certain liberal, European attitude came across in the broadcasts. Mr Chapman: I think we need to be a little bit careful about that because that consultative work, without in any way wanting to say it did not have any value, it was a very small number of people in a very small number of groups who were asked their views. It is not like going out and doing a major MORI opinion poll where you get thousands of comments. Q139 Mr Horam: It is qualitative research. Mr Chapman: It is qualitative research and it is very small numbers. Q140 Mr Horam: Nevertheless, qualitative research is valuable. Mr Chapman: It is but you have got to be careful with qualitative research about extrapolating out from the research a big pattern or a theme. You have got to put it into the mix. Again, there is a risk, and therefore one of the things you have got to get to help mitigate that risk is the strong news-gathering strength of the BBC World Service in Africa. If we try and report Africa from London that is not going to work. We have invested significantly in both more news gathering strength on the ground and better overseas bureaux and offices to work from, which means the reporters and correspondents are alongside the stories and alongside the audience. I think that helps to break down this sense that you are broadcasting from 3,000 miles away in London from a Western viewpoint. Q141 Mr Horam: Nonetheless, there was clearly a Western viewpoint detected from your respondents, however small in number they were. Is this not a danger that you may have an unconscious liberal, Western European attitude which comes across in judgemental terms? Mr Chapman: There is a danger of it but I do not think it is a profound, deep danger. If it was a widespread threat of our programming we would not be seeing the sort of performance we are seeing because more and more people would be dissatisfied and disaffected from us because of the attitude they would be seeing in us. That is not what is happening. That is also not what is happening when we asked them whether we were a trustworthy, fair-minded, impartial news-gathering organisation. If we had all of the traits that some of those people were saying, we would not be scoring the sort of scores we are scoring when we are asking them about those issues. Our scores would be going down. Well, they are not going down, they are going up. Q142 Mr Pope: Just turning to the Arabic TV service, when is that due to launch and is it on track and on time? Mr Chapman: It is early days yet. It is due to launch in the autumn of 2007 which is when it was always due to launch. It is on track and on time. We have made some pretty important strategic decisions about the location for the television service. It will be part of the new Broadcasting House complex. We have just signed through the BBC an agreement with the developers to start the fit-out of the floors in question. We have recruited some of the senior BBC people who need to work on it from outside and inside the organisation. So, yes, at this early stage it is on-track but, to be fair, it is only a few months into the process. I suppose the real question will be in a year's time when you ask me that question is it on track and on time. Q143 Mr Pope: You just told my colleague, Mr Horam, that you cannot broadcast to Africa from London as there is a danger of it being seen as a Western tainted service if you do that. Is there not a danger that it will be seen as a Western tainted service if we broadcast to the Arab world from Broadcasting House? Mr Chapman: I did not say we cannot broadcast from London. I said it is very important that we had a strong news-gathering presence on the ground. We do broadcast from London to Africa all the time. Network Africa comes, for example, from Bush House every day of the week. It is quite possible to combine a strong sense of presence on the ground, understanding the stories and issues, and broadcast from many thousands of miles away. They are not incompatible. Q144 Mr Pope: What do you think the key lessons are that you have learnt from the difficulties that the BBC had in the mid-1990s with its Arabic TV service? Mr Chapman: It was a very different time and it was a very different framework for the funding of that Arabic television offer. That Arabic television offer was a subscription service with a commercial partner where the commercial partner was paying large amounts of the costs, both in terms of distribution and production. This is a very different model. One of the things we have learned is that is not a very good model. We need a different model and the model we have got now, which is a grant-in-aid funded model where some of these inherent conflicts just are not possible, is a better model. We are going to be paying our own way in terms of distribution and our own way in terms of production. We are not relying upon third party funding to do that and therefore I think we are more secure in terms of distribution and our overall set-up, if you like, than we would have been otherwise. Q145 Mr Pope: A final point because I know Mr Hamilton wants to come in on this. Is grant-in-aid funding not a double-edged sword? There is a danger that the World Service will be seen in some ways as a state broadcaster in a region where the UK's presence has been, to say the least, controversial over the last few years. Is that not a problem as well, that if you were perhaps to take a more commercial route it would at least enable you to be at arm's length from the government? I am not for a moment impugning the integrity of the World Service, I am just saying in terms of perception that might be a difficulty? Mr Chapman: It might be a difficulty but all the evidence argues the other way. First of all, you have got an Arabic radio service which has been broadcasting now for 50 or 60 years which again when you ask audiences about the perception of it, they perceive it as independent of government, despite the fact it is funded by the British taxpayer. Interestingly enough, even in a country like Iraq where you would intuitively think audiences of the World Service at this time would be in serious difficulty because not many people would want to listen because it comes from London and it is British funded; actually that is not the case. I have just been myself and spent four or five days in the Middle East and one of the things that really hit me going round the Gulf States-and I have also visited Cairo and Jordan and other places in recent years in preparation for Arabic television-is how sophisticated the audience is about seeing, on the one hand, British government policy as one thing, Iraq as one thing, and the BBC as an independent broadcaster, despite the fact it is funded directly by taxation, in this case the World Service. They see an independent broadcaster bringing them reliable news and information which is not there to convert them to a particular government policy. They understand that and that is one of the reasons why the World Service gets such high scores for independence and trust-worthiness. This clever, sophisticated perception about the role of the World Service has been around for 30 or 40 years. It is a very, very strong brand in this world and I think people will turn to the news service. As I say, everybody I met in my recent trip last week cannot wait for the BBC's Arabic TV to start, including some of its biggest competitors because they see the value of having it in the market as part of the mix. Q146 Mr Hamilton: Can I follow on from what my colleague Mr Pope has been saying. You do not think then that you are too late into the market, since Al Jazeera has been going for ten years now and many of your former journalists from the previous attempt to set up an Arabic TV station went to work for Al Jazeera? You do not think it is too late? You have got competition from Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya as well as other TV stations, of course. Mr Chapman: No, I do not think it is too late. It is not just me who does not think it is too late; when we have asked audiences who would use this service they are very clear that it is not too late. I cannot put a number on precisely how many would use it, that would be impossible at this stage, but all the feedback we have got in terms of the audience research we have done, and over the last couple of years I have met a fair number of people both at the top of government and all around the Arab world, and they all are welcoming to the prospect of the BBC doing Arabic television. They wish, frankly, we had carried on doing it for the last ten or 15 years. They were rather sorry we stopped, although they knew the reasons why, and are rather glad we are coming back. It will be part of a mix. I do not think people just watch the BBC and do not watch Al Jazeera and vice versa. People in the Arab world are very sophisticated and they move around, and they cross-compare, and they look at the running orders of programmes, they look at what is leading the BBC and what is leading here. It is a very sophisticated market and there is room for all of us. Q147 Mr Hamilton: It is good news of course that there is room for a revived, new BBC television service which is totally funded from grant-in-aid. That is really good news. However, you are going to spend £19 million a year running this station which will only run for 12 hours a day. I know that is not what you originally wanted but do you not think there is a problem in just running for 12 hours a day when Al Jazeera and, I think, Al Arabiya run for 24 hours a day I understand from your own costs it would only cost a further £6 million to run it for 24 hours? Is that something you are going to aim to do? Mr Chapman: I would obviously like to run it for 24 hours. When we put in the original submission it was a 24-hour service. I think we have gone far enough in terms of reprioritisation inside the World Service's limited resources. £6 million on one level does not sound very much but it is the budget for eight or nine language services in the World Service. There is neither a case nor an appetite for further closures of language services to fund that gap. I do not think it is appropriate because you cannot make out the intellectual case for it. You cannot make out a valid case that it is an appropriate thing to do in broadcasting terms. I would like to see that gap closed and I have said to the Foreign Office and I have said to Government, "Please will you close that gap," and we have got to carry on those discussions. We are obviously coming towards a CSR now and there may be an opportunity in that context to raise that issue again. It would be much better if it was on 24 hours a day. Q148 Mr Hamilton: It is ironic of course that the Foreign Office lost £6 million on one property deal in the last financial year, but that is neither here nor there. Do you think that your effectiveness as an Arab TV station is going to be significantly hampered by that 12-hour gap? If a news story comes up while you are off air are you going to be able to broadcast specially? How are you going to be able to cope with that when you are reporting? Mr Chapman: It would depend upon the scale of the story. On the morning of a major story, if it was flagged up in advance, I think we would have to rush things together and start early on that particular morning. The trouble with news is that it is not predictable, it is unexpected, and you do not have that kind of nice easy run-in period, and therefore I would very much like to see this gap closed, yes, I think it would add strength to the offer. All I can say to you is that I keep on arguing the case. Q149 Mr Keetch: Two quick questions, if I may, Chairman, one on staff and then one on content. On staff, following on really from what Mr Hamilton said, are there people in the industry in that part of the world with that knowledge to permit you to do this? I know some of your previous staff have been poached by Al Jazeera and others and a recent editor and general manager with the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation in Dubai has joined your good selves. Mr Chapman: That is right, yes. Q150 Mr Keetch: Are there the staff to enable you to produce the kind of high-quality service you would like to see in that part of the world? Mr Chapman: There definitely are the staff around. The growth of television-trained, Arabic-speaking journalists has increased hugely in the last ten years. The staff are available not just from the Al Jazeeras and Al Arabiyas of this world but obviously in national television stations, in local television stations, sometimes working with the media where we can train them to do television skills so, yes, I think the opportunity to come to London to work with the BBC with all of its editorial standards and high brand values will be very attractive to many people. One of the things that we can guarantee is that the agenda will be a free and unfettered one in terms of covering the stories in the Middle East. For some staff who currently work for some international television services in Arabic (not the BBC's) there is a sense that there are no-go areas in terms of the journalism, in the sense that if you are funded by a particular country or a particular organisation it is a bit hard to do searching journalism about that area of the world if you are getting funding from there. When you talk to people privately about these issues, staff who work in those stations, one of the attractions of the BBC would be to work in an editorial climate where that is one of the fears you do not have to think about. Q151 Mr Keetch: I am glad you said that, Mr Chapman, because when the Committee was in UAE we met some journalists who felt they were being self-censored in that respect, which leads me on to my second question about content. It must be said that Al Jazeera broadcasts some graphic images that would not be broadcast on the mainstream BBC. Will you be constrained from doing that? The broadcasting of the beheading of somebody, for example, which might be seen on a television station in the Middle East would not be seen here. Would you broadcast that? Mr Chapman: No, we would not broadcast that because in the end what matters here is that the editorial values and standards of the BBC's Arabic TV service are those of the BBC. There is not a separate set of standards-not that I am saying there should be-for any part of the BBC's output; it is all the same standards. If we judge editorially that it is inappropriate, it is insensitive, it is wrong, it does not add anything to the telling of the story to broadcast beheadings, we do not do that and the Arabic service is not going to be running a separate editorial agenda around those images and issues from the rest of the BBC; absolutely not. Q152 Mr Keetch: So the judging of the content on that kind of issue would be done on a BBC basis not on a Middle Eastern basis? Mr Chapman: Yes, absolutely right. Q153 Mr Purchase: Just picking up you were saying there is no intellectual case for doing this rather than that, this Committee decided very strongly that we wanted to extend the reach and service of the BBC to the Arabic-speaking peoples. We were very powerful in our demand for that. I understand that £6 million is not easy to come by, but in the end this is about making a qualitative judgment as well as a quantitative one. Given the critical nature of this arena of the Arabic service, tell me what methodology you employ to refute any intellectual case for putting more into the Arabic service than for something else? Mr Chapman: I think there is an intellectual case for a 24-hour service; there is no doubt about that. The issue is about making relative judgments, of course it is. When we did the review of all of our what were then 42 language services, we looked at various criteria, including, as I said earlier, the broad geo-political importance, the issue around the extent to which people had free and independent access to independent media, and the third issue was were we making an impact. All the remaining language services are doing a pretty good job against those three criteria, so it is pretty hard to argue that we should just close all these other things down, move all the money off into the Arab world and Middle East, even though there is a strong case for doing more broadcasts to the Arabic world and the Middle East. In the end everyone has to accept that the World Service in its plans up to 2010 has reprioritised something like 18% of its budget over a three-year period, far, far higher than RPI, in order for all the things to happen that I have talked about, and I think that is the right level of prioritisation and the right level of efficiency savings. If we were to do more I think people would be coming to me and saying, "Why are you stopping broadcasting to Rwanda? Why are you stopping broadcasting to Russia? Why are you stopping broadcasting to other parts of the world where there is a need for the World Service?" You have not got the right sort of attitudes. Q154 Mr Purchase: That is why I am asking you about your methodology because I accept we can all make judgments about these things but this is a qualitative as well as a quantitative problem --- Mr Chapman: Yes, it is. Q155 Mr Purchase: I was asking you-and I understand it is difficult-is there a broad methodology employed by the World Service to determine whether to do this rather than that? Mr Chapman: There is indeed and I think I articulated the three broad criteria we use in making those judgments. You were talking about British foreign policy objectives and you have to be broadly cognisant of those. We are not operating in a totally isolated framework. That is just not a realistic mind-set. You also have to take into account the broadcasting issues and the media issues, which is the specialism that we bring to the table, and understanding those markets and understanding the position of those societies in terms of access to freedom of information. One of the reasons why we have made a very strong case and a right case for changing the mix of languages and the closure of the Eastern European language services was because we could argue that in terms of impact declining, in terms of access to free and independent information-far more than was around at the time of the Cold War-it is a completely different media climate. If you go to the Czech Republic or Poland now, it is a completely different society and on the first one-relative geo-political importance-you could make out a strong case that it would be better to invest more money in the Islamic world at this particular time, with all the conflicts and issues that flow from it, than to carry on investing a large sum of money (over £10 million in Eastern Europe). In that sense, that is the intellectual apparatus and that is the framework that we have to use. That seems to be the most sophisticated around. I do not think there is a more sophisticated one. It is one that does throw up some pretty clear priorities. Q156 Sir John Stanley: We have to try and deal with the world as it is evolving and as it is now and since you made what I think was a very good strategic decision to establish the Arabic television service, the world has moved on further. I would suggest that the overall British interest, and indeed the free world interest, in you achieving 24-hour coverage with your Arabic television service is now even more compelling than when you first took the decision to establish the service on a 12-hour a day basis. Indeed, the Prime Minister's speech last week in terms of how important it is to try and mobilise the modern Muslim world, I would suggest, adds to the case for this being so compelling. The question I would like to put to you is have you made any approaches to your parent department, the Foreign Office, for going for some form of supplementary additional grant from either the FCO or indeed a supplementary contribution from the Treasury to in what is by the standard of public expenditure an incredibly small amount of money with potentially a huge benefit for Britain? Have you put that possibility? I say that against a background of the Secretary of State for Health last week, she suddenly came to the House and announced she had found £750 million for community hospitals, which those of us with community hospitals in our constituency found very welcome. If the Health Secretary can suddenly find £750 million, would it not be beyond the wit of yourselves and the Foreign Office to find £6 million out of the Treasury for what by any international perspective is an incredibly cost-effective addition to your performance? Mr Chapman: I must agree with you! The point is I think it would be an incredibly cost-effective addition to our performance. It would be a very good thing to do. We made out the case. We made out the case first of all for funding the Arabic television service during the spending round of 2004. We subsequently went through the reprioritisation exercise which resulted in the outcome last October. I think the BBC has gone a very long way to helping this to happen. I would very much like to see the Foreign Office and Treasury help us close the gap and make it possible to be on air 24/7. Q157 Sir John Stanley: Could you answer my specific question. Have you made a specific request to the Foreign Office to seek the additional funding of £6 million? Mr Chapman: We have over the last two years made a number of requests in this area and they are very aware of our request. Q158 Sir John Stanley: And they have been turned down? They must have been, presumably? Mr Chapman: At the moment there has been no money forthcoming but we are heading towards a spending review process now which will start in the early part of 2007 and I am expecting it to be a major part and plank of our bid. Chairman: I think we have seven minutes before a vote so I want to cover three more areas quickly. Q159 Mr Pope: I have a very quick last question on this topic which is to say I can understand why you said in response to my question earlier that you wanted it to be all grant-in-aid funded and have it operating to the BBC ethos and attracting the journalists, but if the option is a 12-hour service that is 100 per cent funded by grant-in-aid or a 24-hour service which is only slightly funded by additional revenue, perhaps generated by advertisement, would that not be a better option? Would it not be better to get up and running a 12-hour service and have a review of this and say, "We can expand to a 24-hour service at no extra expense to the taxpayer. We can generate this ourselves"? Would you at least consider that? Mr Chapman: We did consider the whole issue of commercial funding when we put forward the bid in the first place and the truth is that the range and source of commercial advertising revenue that is in theory available to the BBC for an Arabic TV service is limited, and even taking money to do a hybrid to get some of it funded by commercial and some of it funded by public money, raises all sorts of issues and given the source of a lot of the advertising revenue and the societies which it would come from, I think it would cause us editorial difficulties. Q160 Chairman: Can I ask you about where we are with the funding of a Farsi language television service? Jack Straw when he was Foreign Secretary gave evidence to us and said that he was very sympathetic to the idea but the problem was the Treasury. I am paraphrasing but that is basically what he said. Have you got anywhere with developments on that front? Mr Chapman: I think we are at an earlier stage than we are on the Arabic television front. Where we have got to with that is we have been in discussions with the FCO about it. We put forward a detailed argument as to why we believe it would be a good thing to do, for the people of Iran, for audiences in Iran, and the Foreign Office are presently considering it. I think it is fair to say that they are won over by the value of it and the case for it. I think they think it is a good idea but they then have to have those conversations you talked about with the Treasury and they will need to have those conversations in the summer and autumn to try and see whether we can get the sort of funding we are talking about for a Farsi TV service. Coming back to Sir John's point, it would be the source of some sort of supplementary bid outside the CSR process. I think you have to look at Farsi television outside the CSR process because it is a significant sum of money and it is a special need and a special case. I very much hope that the FCO will persuade the Treasury that it is a good idea. Q161 Chairman: We will do our best to help. Can I just take you to our visit yesterday where we saw the very interesting on-line website services that you have in Farsi, Arabic, Russian and other languages. Clearly your new media operation is very important. You are investing a lot of money in that area. How do you see that going in your investment plans? What proportion of your annual spending is going to be spent on these new media? Mr Chapman: I will ask Alison to talk about the proportion of spending in new media. I think that we have done very well so far in this area. I am not complacent about it but I think we were one of earliest international broadcasters to really see the value of new media activity in languages additional to English. I think we have been selective about our investment. I do not think it is appropriate to invest millions of pounds in every language because the user base in that society is not there to access it, it would be wasted money, but in seven or eight languages we are a 24/7 news operation, with audio, with good images, with good updated analysis and text and background interpretation of the main international stories. The next development will be to provide those top stories in video because as societies mature and broadband access becomes more widespread, people like to be able to look at the latest news on their PC as well as to read about it or listen to it. That is part of our priorities. In terms of the spending position? Ms Woodhams: Last year we spent about £14 million directly on new media activities, which is about seven per cent of our total grant-in-aid spend, but that will go up by another £1 million this year and probably another £1 million the following year. Q162 Chairman: What about the move towards getting broadband for all your on-line services? When is that going to happen? Mr Chapman: It depends on how you define broadband. If you define broadband as services compatible for a broadband user, I think we will be in a position to offer strong, high-quality video work, news reports in video to accompany our text and stills, next year. That is part of the investment Alison is talking about. The thing with new media is that everyone gets very excited about new media, and as a former Director of On-Line myself, I get very excited about it too, but the investment has to be a proportionate. There are many societies to which the World Service broadcast now which are a million miles away from broadband. In fact, they are a million miles away from narrowband access to the web on any large scale, so we cannot get into a position where we impoverish people who rely upon radio --- Q163 Chairman: You have got clockwork radios on the one hand and broadband on the other. Mr Chapman: I have to deal with this complicated continuum which is different in every society. We have to get that right. Chairman: A final question from Greg Pope. Q164 Mr Pope: You have launched a website aimed at the mainland Chinese market which is quite an interesting departure because the BBC's main website is, by and large, blocked in China. We discovered this when we were there a month or so ago. I notice there is not a link from your website to the main BBC website. Is this because you are not carrying any hard-hitting stories that may upset the Chinese Government? Is there a danger that you will get portrayed in the same way as, for example, Google have been portrayed as trimming in order to access what is potentially a huge market? I understand that but I think there is a danger that you may lay yourself open to that criticism and even harsher criticism from my colleagues. Mr Chapman: I was criticised in that way by the Financial Times when we launched what was the second Chinese website. Let me be absolutely clear about this. The BBC World Service funds and produces two websites in Chinese and Mandarin aimed at the Chinese market. One is BBC Chinese.com, which is a news site which, to use your phrase, is hard-hitting and no-holds-barred in terms of the range of subjects covered. That is, as you say from your own experience, comprehensively blocked from access inside China. Because there is a demand for it, we also launched a much smaller site, which is mainly about English language teaching and British culture, how you can come and study here and general information about Britain, which is not blocked by the Chinese authorities. In addition, we also have partnerships with radio stations in China that broadcast our English language teaching programmes. You can cut off your nose to spite your face here, if you are not careful. You could take the view: as I was blocked with my news, I am not going to make any effort at all to reach out to people in China whatsoever and I am not going to do anything else. We took the view that it was worth putting a limited investment into an English language teaching site, which complements our Radio work that is specifically targeted to China. That seems to me quite reasonable. People can accuse us of whatever they like but, when you look at it factually, it does not stand up to analysis. Chairman: Mr Chapman and Ms Woodhams, thank you for coming. The Committee suspended from 3.37 pm to 4 pm for a division in the House Memorandum submitted by the British Council Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Sir David Green KCMG, Director-General, Mr Martin Davidson, Deputy Director-General, and Ms Margaret Mayne, Director of Finance and Resources, British Council, gave evidence. Q165 Chairman: May I thank the British Council for coming to join us. As you know, we regularly have you before us, as we did only a few months ago. I will ask a catch-all question to begin. What do you believe is the purpose of the British Council today? What value does it bring to British taxpayers? Sir David Green: Our purpose is to win friends for the UK and to win friends who are going to be friends for the long term. Traditional diplomacy is no longer sufficient in the world in which we live and public diplomacy is therefore a very important tool in order to build a constituency of support for the UK, and I believe vital to our long-term prosperity and security. What the British Council does is to build friendships and long-term relationships with people who are going to be in positions of authority and influence in the future, so we target the successor generation, the younger people. Therefore, we have to engage with them in areas that are going to be of interest to them. That could be the arts, education-primarily education-science, English language and sport. I could give you a couple of concrete examples in terms of value for the UK. If you take international recruitment, we are the lead organisation in terms of recruiting overseas students to the UK. There are some one million students if you take into account all the English language students, FE, HE and students in school here. That brings a benefit to the UK of £10 billion per annum, but, more important than that, that is one million people who could become friends for the UK. Another example is the work we are doing on climate change, which is a key Government priority. We have been running a project called ZeroCarbonCity, which is going to 200 cities across 70 countries and will be seen and engaged with, by 2007, some eight million people. Those are two examples of where we can really add value for the UK. One of the difficulties of public diplomacy is how you measure its success. We have been doing a lot of work in terms of how to do that and the Annual Report that we have produced this year for the first time really tries to be as transparent as we can in terms of the success or indeed where we have not done as well as we might have done. Perhaps finally, just in terms of an indication of the value that we bring to the UK, it is quite telling that other countries and other analogues look to the British Council as something of a model. So only last month the French have launched a new organisation, Cultures France, which they say is modelled on the British Council. Similarly, the Canadians, Americans, Germans, Irish and most recently the Indians look to the British Council as the model for cultural relations and public diplomacy. Q166 Chairman: As you know, we have recently published a report on public diplomacy, including a section on the British Council and its work. One of the recommendations that this committee made was that there should be an independent review of your work. What is your response to that? Do you have any reservations about that proposal? Sir David Green: We do have some reservations. We agreed with the line that the Foreign Office took in replying to the report when they gave their submission. We feel that the Carter Review, which took place over a period of 18 months and concluded at the end of December last year, was a thorough review, and came up with a series of proposals, which are now being enacted and that to have a further review on top of that would not be particularly helpful. I think we should wait and see how the new arrangements bed down and then, perhaps in two or three years' time, we should decide whether or not it is appropriate to do a further review. The British Council has probably been the most reviewed organisation over its history, and even in my time there have been two major reviews. There was the Wilton Review five years ago and then the Carter Review two years ago. Q167 Chairman: Can I move to one specific issue which your Annual Report refers to as your long-standing association with Shakespeare. You co-produced a production of Midsummer Night's Dream in India. Could you tell how much that cost and how you felt that contributed to the goals of the British Council? Sir David Green: This is a project using Midsummer Night's Dream as the play that was being performed. It was directed by Tim Supple from the RSC. What we wanted to do and what our regional director in India wanted to do was to have a director from the UK work with Indian actors to do a new, fresh production of Midsummer Night's Dream that would then be performed in India and also, it was hoped, in Sri Lanka, because we were covering both of those countries. It was sponsored by Hutch, the mobile telephone company in India, although in the end they came up with less sponsorship than they had initially promised. It involved 20 or 22 actors from India, who were auditioned through a series of workshops by the director across India until he had reduced it the 20 that he wanted to work with. He then was invited to bring it to the UK as part of the Complete Works of Shakespeare season at Stratford. I saw it and it is a very extraordinary production in seven Indian languages but probably half of it is in English. It was critically very well reviewed. Why do I say that is important from a public diplomacy point of view? It was demonstrating the mutuality; it was using a UK director to work in different ways within the Indian context, new ways of direction and also someone with a very deep understanding of Shakespeare. It was also for him very important because it was using different types of performance and a range of different sorts of backgrounds of the people who were taking part. It caused a huge amount of interest in India, a huge amount of media interest. I do not know what the numbers who read about it or actually saw it were, but from that point of view it was a very successful public diplomacy event. Q168 Chairman: How much did it cost? Sir David Green: What we are now doing is working with the director and his production to do an international tour across the world. I am afraid I cannot give you the costs. I will have to come back to you on that. I do not know what they were. Q169 Chairman: Can you give me a rough area of what we are talking about because 20 actors and a big production, bringing people backwards and forwards must have had a considerable cost. Sir David Green: My expectation would be that it would be probably in the region of a quarter of a million pounds but I do not know precisely what it was. Q170 Chairman: When will you know? Sir David Green: I can find out very soon. Q171 Chairman: When you take on these major projects, how does it work? Do you set a ceiling? Do you have a call for a particular person to work from or do you basically approve the proposal and then it just develops? Sir David Green: No. We are changing the way we operate now to a commissioning process, but the way it works is that a project plan is put up and is then approved and there is a budget. Q172 Chairman: You cannot tell me what the budget for this proposal is? Sir David Green: I do not know. I can easily find out. Ms Mayne: I would agree that it is in the order of a quarter of a million pounds. Q173 Ms Stuart: Sir David, I think this is your fifth appearance in front of the committee. You are due to retire in March 2007. I hope you will not regard these sessions as a cruel and unusual punishment. Can I tempt you to write a letter to your successor which covers three points: one thing you wish you had not done; one thing you wish you had done; and the third a thing you wish your successor could do looking forward? Do you want to answer that question later in the proceedings? It is quite important. Sir David Green: Can I mull over that and come back to it? Ms Stuart: One thing you would not have done, one thing you wish you had done, and one, looking forward, things which you say in the current state you could not have done but it is something your successor needs to do. Q174 Chairman: Can I move on to looking at the overall role of the British Council in relation to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office? The FCO published its strategy paper in March this year called Active Diplomacy. How was the British Council involved or consulted in the process of performing that FCO strategy? Sir David Green: We were given a draft, bearing in mind that this is an update of their original strategy that they produced in 2003, and invited to make comments on it, which I did. Q175 Chairman: Which issues did you highlight as important? Sir David Green: The strategic priorities where we can make the biggest difference are in terms of making the world safer from global terrorism; preventing and resolving conflicts with a very strong international system; supporting the UK economy; and achieving climate change, which is the recent one that has been added. We commented in terms of how we could work in support of those. Q176 Chairman: In view of that, were you surprised that the British Council is only mentioned twice in the whole document, once on page 42 and once on page 47? Sir David Green: Yes, a bit surprised, and I did register that. I have, from time to time, made representations that I thought we were under-represented in the parliamentary report in terms of the proportion of the expenditure that goes on the British Council, and indeed the BBC World Service, that the amount of coverage that those two public diplomacy organisations get within the departmental report, and also in the priorities, is not commensurate with the role that we could play. Q177 Chairman: Given that FCO has developed this new strategy, does it have any major implications for the operational work of the British Council? Sir David Green: It really comes back to the question you asked me at the outset. All our work is in the UK's interests and has to come within the framework of the international strategic priorities, so within the priorities that are being set by the Foreign Office, which are of course the UK's priorities, not the Foreign Office's; they are the UK Government's priorities. All of our work-and we have a purpose statement, three outcomes, and then five outputs to help to measure our ability to achieve those outcomes-comes within that framework of the international priorities. If you take making the world safer from global terrorism, then the Connecting Futures work that we have been engaged in is directly contributing to making the world a safer place. That is something we have been doing for five years involving 44 countries and 30,000 individuals, 70 per cent of whom are Muslim. That was very much about building better understanding between people in substantial Muslim populations and the UK. Then on preventing and resolving conflicts through a strong international system, an example of how we can contribute to that is by the Peacekeeping English work that we do which we manage on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and we contribute ourselves as well to a programme called Peacekeeping English. Through that at the moment some 50,000 police, border guards and military personnel are involved in learning English, for obvious reasons, to minimise conflict. I think that is a demonstration of how we can help to prevent conflicts. I could go on. Similarly with the fifth objective of supporting the UK economy: there is PMI, Creative Industries and a number of others areas in which we are engaged. I have given you one example of climate change. The point I would like to make is that all of our work is within that framework of trying to contribute to meeting those international priorities. Q178 Mr Horam: How are the mechanisms for FCO oversight evolving? Sir David Green: I think well. Q179 Mr Horam: What state are they at? Sir David Green: We have presented a suggestion for how we can improve the accountability mechanisms. Q180 Mr Horam: How forward is that suggestion? Sir David Green: The suggestion is that it is several layers. At the top, it is an annual meeting with the chair, Neil Kinnock, who by the way is very sorry that he cannot be here with us today but he has a longstanding engagement in Cardiff giving out degrees. He would have a meeting with the Secretary of State annually. I would have and do have a quarterly meeting with Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office Minister responsible for public diplomacy. We would, at an annual meeting, present our plans to Lord Triesman and that would be at the point at which the Corporate Plan was being agreed. We have a body called the FCO Forum, which contains senior officials, and Martin Davidson, is my representative on that. Q181 Mr Horam: Is that the same as the Leaders Forum? Sir David Green: No. This is an FCO body at senior level but quite a small forum between the Foreign Office and the British Council to talk about operational issues and priorities and to interpret the international priorities and what that means. Q182 Mr Horam: Does that meet as and when necessary? Sir David Green: It meets quarterly. We are very keen to make sure that our country directors in the 110 countries in which we function work closely with their heads of mission and, at the point at which they are developing annual plans, they would discuss those with the heads of mission and they would get agreement to what was in those plans. Q183 Mr Horam: You have a dialogue with the heads of mission in these 110 countries and agree all this? Sir David Green: That is the theory. I cannot, hand on my heart, say it happens but, by and large, that is what we expect to happen. At the point at which we develop the Corporate Plan, which is now a two-year document, we would discuss that with the Foreign Office and we would get agreement to that before it goes forward. That would be through the FCO Forum. I also meet with the Permanent Under-Secretary on a very regular basis. I meet him before every board, but I also meet him more frequently than that. That is very important to keep that mechanism strong. We have a Heads of Mission Survey which gives feedback on the performance of the British Council against our stated outcomes and how we believe they contribute. Q184 Mr Horam: That is very interesting. In the nature of your work, that is very difficult to evaluate, is it not-this is cultural work, this is selling Britain, and all these kinds of things. Some of them are very intangible. How can you possibly have a reliable mechanism for evaluating whether the money spent by you is being well spent? Sir David Green: It is difficult. I hope you have all had a copy of this document.[1] If you have it with you, may I turn you to page 66? We have done a lot of work working with academics on how to evaluate public diplomacy and in particular the building of relationships. This is pioneering work because none of our analogues have done it. Some refining still needs to go on within the methodology. I think it is helpful in terms of showing us where we are doing well and where we need to put more focus. If you take those results there, we are doing well in terms of positive partner results, and that relates to the output that we have, which is that the UK is increasingly recognised as a country of choice for partnering positive social change. If a ministry of education wants to do some curriculum development reform, then we hope that they will choose the UK, and that will be a measure of that. Similarly, self-development results are about individuals wanting to use the UK to help satisfy their own aspirations. Where, as you will have noticed, we have done, on the face of it, less well is on long-term relations. I do not want it to sound like a rather weak excuse, but there is a serious methodology problem with that measure. If I can turn you to page 68, the more accurate measure is the one which is the 'index at T1/T2/T3 view of the UK valuing relations with their country', which gives a result of 73. That was based on a reasonable sample of 42,000 people across the world. I am afraid the earlier ones, the two above that, were based on a much smaller sample of only 320, and I do not think that was particular valid. I apologise for that. I hope that is why you see a not very positive result there. I think it is mainly to do with the methodology. Q185 Mr Horam: That 'creative ideas' seems to have fallen down in the latest figures. Sir David Green: 'Creative ideas' has improved or stayed the same as last year, but did not meet the target, no, that is true. The other point that I would make is that we have had a massive year of change within the reorganisation, and I suspect that we might have been a bit overambitious in terms of setting the targets. What is helpful about this is that it does point us to areas where we have got to put more effort and more focus and helps raise the debate in terms of staff within the organisation actually to try to understand what it is we need to do to improve our performance in these areas. The other one which is not good enough is in customer service, which you will have probably noticed. That again is something that we need really to work on. We can drill down by country and you see where countries have fallen down and some have exceeded the target, but some have dropped much lower than they should have done. Q186 Ms Stuart: Looking through the list of targets and how you measure yourself, I am struck by the ones where you have met your target and the ones over which you have no influence. Let me explain this. "The UK is increasingly recognised as a country of choice for partnering positive social change." That assumes that when it comes to positive social change, UK plc is miles ahead of everyone else in the world. If that is so, and the same words "we satisfy individuals' aspirations for self-development" or "this country is ahead of creative ideas and achievement", if that is the case, then actually that is not an achievement by the British Council; that is a state within the United Kingdom. The question is: if that is so, to what extent does the British Council manage to convey that to the rest of the world? Sir David Green: The achievement of the British Council is to make sure that people recognise that the UK is strong in those areas of creative ideas or in terms of education, or indeed in reform. Clearly, if we were starting from a weak base and what we have to offer from the UK is not of a sufficiently high standard, then we would be in difficulty. We are lucky in that we have a huge pool of creativity, as you know, and a very strong education system, et cetera, but our job is to make sure that people know about it. What this is measuring is the extent to which people are actively using the UK in order to study whether to come to the UK or to use distance learning courses, which are provided by the UK, or to learn English or whatever. We can measure the extent to which they are doing that. Similarly, if a ministry of education wants to reform its curriculum or improve its governance of schools, we can measure whether they look to the UK or to the US or to France or Germany. Our role is very much as the facilitator and, in a sense, the marketer of the UK's abilities and skills, and that is measurable. Q187 Ms Stuart: What I am concerned about is that you do not set yourself targets of known factors. If I go back, I arrived in this country between 1972 and 1974 when essentially this country was a basket case. The rest of the world, quite rightly, would not have looked to the UK for positive social change and a whole lot of other things, and your performance indicators would have been miserable because no one looked at this country. I am not putting this question as a critic but as a friend to you. Sir David Green: They might be miserable now, though, because we had failed in marketing what is good about the UK. If we had not been able to persuade the ministries of education that our system of higher education funding is well worth looking at, then we could have failed, regardless of the strength of it. Mr Davidson: What is important is the specific question that we asked, which is: has your involvement with the British Council changed your perception? So: has your involvement with the British Council made you increasingly recognise the UK as a country which will help meet aspirations? We do specifically ask: has your involvement with us an organisation changed your perception? I think they are an acceptable measure of the value that the British Council brings into this equation. Q188 Chairman: Can I take you back to public diplomacy? We have had the Carter Review and we have commented on that. I have alluded to it earlier. What benefits do you think the new Public Diplomacy Board is going to bring to your work and to the broader co-ordination of public diplomacy? Sir David Green: I think the initiative that started with the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board after the Wilton Review helped to co-ordinate the work of the major public diplomacy organisations, which is the Foreign Office, ourselves and the BBC World Service, but also a number of other players who are important but at a secondary level. What Lord Carter said was that we need to strengthen that further and he felt that the Public Diplomacy Board had become too dissipated and he wanted to have a much smaller group, which has on it the heads of the BBC World Service, the British Council, a very senior person from the Foreign Office, chaired by a minister and then with two external people to bring a fresh look. The initial signs are good in terms of the way in which we are co-ordinating our work, recognising the fact that each of us has different things to bring to the table, and that we are not trying to homogenise public diplomacy but we are recognising that the British Council has something different that it can offer to the BBC World Service, et cetera. I think there is also a recognition that it is a more complex area of activity than perhaps was first thought. I welcome that because public diplomacy is very nuanced and it is a complex activity. What progress we have made so far is to start talking about how we interpret the international priorities in terms of geographical priorities and see which organisations can best contribute in those countries. We have also started to think about what the key theme should be in order to do a pilot project, which would then be assessed in terms of how effective it is. There are three themes that we are looking at: climate change; promoting the UK economy; and creating liberal democracy. Different players will have different things to bring to each of those three themes. Q189 Chairman: Can I take you back to what you said about countries in which we should operate? I have just received an email from a parliamentary colleague who is concerned at the closure of your operation in Peru. He points out that DfID has also closed its office in Peru and the Serious Organised Crime Agency has also transferred drugs liaison officers from Peru to Colombia, despite the fact that after the USA, the UK sends the largest number of visitors to Peru of any country. Have you been told by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to close your operation in Peru, or did you make this decision purely spontaneously in coincidence with what all these other things which have been happening? Sir David Green: It was not spontaneous. It was very carefully thought through, but it was the decision that we came to because we did not feel that we were having sufficient impact to justify the resources that we were putting in. Given that we have opened in the last three years in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and we are now seeking to open in Algeria, we cannot just carry on opening up in countries; we have to balance off and make decisions about where we can make most impact. Q190 Chairman: Do you make that decision yourself or are you advised to do it by the FCO? Sir David Green: We made the decision ourselves but we then had to get the approval of ministers to close in Peru, but it was not an instruction from the Foreign Office, far from it. Q191 Chairman: I did not say it was an instruction. Sir David Green: There was no pressure from the Foreign Office. Mr Davidson: It is a discussion which we have as part of our regular discussions with the Foreign Office about where geographical priorities lie. I have to say that in my experience we have never had an easy run with the Foreign Office whenever we seek to close. In the case of Peru, we had the discussion on the basis of what we sought to do. There was quite a lot of questioning on whether or not that was appropriate but, in the end, the Department did agree with us that it was appropriate. Q192 Chairman: Are there any other countries where you have withdrawn or are withdrawing operations at the moment? Sir David Green: No. Mr Davidson: There is none under consideration at the moment. Q193 Sandra Osborne: My question is in relation to your level of independence as an organisation. I know there were fears expressed during the consultation on the Carter Report that in some way the new set-up might compromise your independence as a British Council, with the new set-up of the Public Diplomacy Board and the Minister chairing it and all that. What would be your assessment of that, albeit it is early days? Sir David Green: That relates to Ms Stuart's question. I can give you one-third of an answer to your question which is: what would I urge my successor to do or what would I suggest my successor does? I think I would urge my successor to retain the arm's length relationship with government and the ring-fencing, because I think that is absolutely critical to the strength of the British Council and its ability to add value to the UK. When we were having discussions with Lord Carter about the report, that was the thing that we were most keen to protect, our operational independence. Whilst we accept that we must and should and it is absolutely right that we do work within the international priorities set by the Government, we believe that it is in the Government's and the UK's interest for us to remain at arm's length from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That is certainly understood by Lord Triesman and the senior officials within the Foreign Office. There is, though, an issue, which will have to be worked through in time and it will be something which my successor will have to take on, and that is the relationship between the Public Diplomacy Board and the British Council Board because there may come a time when the Public Diplomacy Board makes decisions which are in conflict with the views of the British Council Board. When I discussed that with Lord Carter, I asked him the question which board did he think had sovereignty, and he said "the British Council Board". I think that is an important principle. You have hit a really crucial spot in terms of making this work because getting that relationship right between the Public Diplomacy Board and the British Council Board is going to be of critical importance. Q194 Sandra Osborne: It sounds as if the independence of the board might be under threat. Sir David Green: No, I do not feel that, and the fact that it was written into the Carter Review is a very clear recognition of the need to respect the operational independence of the British Council and the editorial independence of the BBC World Service, which runs like a leitmotiv throughout the report. That was very good protection. The fact that ring-fencing has now been in operation since the Spending Review in 2000 and Lord Carter said should remain is also an important factor as well. Q195 Mr Mackinlay: On the places, we have dealt with the places you have vacated, as it were, but I think in previous years I have raised the question of Kyrgyzstan. I was interested that you said you had had discussions about the Foreign Office's priorities implicit in that but you are not governed by that. I am like a long-playing gramophone record with Sir Michael Jay on Kyrgyzstan and I make no apology for that. I simply have never been able to get to the bottom of why the United Kingdom, either our mainstream diplomacy or yourselves, are not in Kyrgyzstan. It is a relatively small country but in the league table of the 'stans', it is one which at this moment of time is not bad, and I choose my words. I am incredulous why not, bearing in mind its political importance in terms of big players-the United States of America and Russia are both there combating a lot of other things. Why are we not there? Sir David Green: Mr Mackinlay, you have also raised Belarus in the past. Q196 Mr Mackinlay: Yes, and I have deliberately held back on that. In fairness and being serious, it is a good point, but you answered that. You said there were difficulties and things move on. The Kyrgyzstan matter is really is amazing on the diplomacy side. I do not want to labour the point. We have had plenty of evidence. This committee has expressed concern and dismay about this. There have never been volunteers. It would also make one happier if we thought that there was some impediment to a mainstream proper embassy there. Surely this is where you are most valuable? Sir David Green: We would certainly be able to make a very strong impact there and we are able to do that in countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. I would like to come back to you with a proper response on this, if I may. One of the things that we have sought to do over the last few years is to rationalise the network so that where we have a presence, it is a presence that can actually operate really effectively and make impact. One of the things that I inherited when I arrived as Director-General was an operation that was spread far too thinly across the world, with too many country operations and too many centres within those countries. The first thing I did was to rationalise that. I take your points. I would like to come back to you with a proper response. There will be other countries which will be ones that we should be considering for opening. Angola is another one that we ought to be considering opening at some point. I would need to look at that more carefully. Mr Davidson: One of the ways that we have to look at country operations in the future is through the lens of our regional network. Part of the reason for setting up the regions was to move away from having to have a full operation in every single country and to look at the ways in which we can operate into countries from neighbours. In the case of Angola, we are looking at how we can operate out of South Africa. In the case of Kyrgyzstan, I think we would be looking to see whether or not it is appropriate to expand from Uzbekistan there. In the case of Belarus, is it possible, for example, to do more work out of our Russia operation? I think from the days when every time we wanted to expand our operation, it was through a quite expensive fixed cost base on which we then start working; we are looking for a more flexible approach in the future. Q197 Mr Mackinlay: I am very grateful for that. Obviously in your brief it says 'Mackinlay will raise Belarus'. You see, I did not. There is probably a lesson not to do that. At the other end of the scale, this summer I hope to visit the British Council in Australia. I have never been there and I am looking forward to it. I did want to ask about states like Australia and New Zealand, the places where English is predominantly the language; the culture is Anglo-Saxon to an extent. Australia is practically all grant-aided. There is not much income from Australia. I suppose I am floundering a little bit. With places like Australia, is this a high priority for our cultural diplomacy? Surely things like Shakespeare, film, music and drama are going to be going out there and there is a marketplace. Indeed, arguably it is the job for those parts of arts and culture to market themselves. Sir David Green: We have got to do a further exercise in terms of the Change programme and what we are doing about reprioritising the expenditure across the world. Clearly that part of the world will be subject to that same review. In terms of our operation in Australia, it is very much around education and promoting the UK's education as a destination for students to come to and also around creative industries. We do a lot of work in connecting up arts organisations and promoters in Australia with those in the UK. There is a similar programme in New Zealand. There are other strong connections in terms of sharing best practice in education systems. I know that the DfES and the Ministries of Education in Australia and New Zealand are very positive about the connections that we have built there, and indeed in other governmental areas of policy work. I think that is a very fair question and it will be something that we look at when we review the whole of the canvas of the world in terms of where we should be putting our priorities, which to some extent will be influenced by the Public Diplomacy Board. Q198 Mr Hamilton: Looking at your finances, Sir David, I noticed that from the year 2004 to 2005 and 2005 to 2006 your fees and income from services and other sources increased by ₤19 million and your total resources by ₤44.1 million, assuming my arithmetic is correct. Last year, Lord Kinnock told us that about 60 per cent of the British Council's income is self-generated. I have not been able to work that out in my head just now. Given your success in generating income and the fact that that income appears to be increasing more quickly than your grant in aid, do you think there will come a time when the British Council will ever be self-financing? Sir David Green: No. Q199 Mr Hamilton: Why not? Sir David Green: First, can I nail one thing and that is that all of the work we do in terms of teaching English through our language schools and the examinations that we promote on behalf of examination boards is not in any way subsidised by the grant-in-aid. It is a completely separate operation and there is no subsidy of those operations by the grant. I would put it the other way, that the value that the UK gets and the UK Government gets is that for every pound that the British Council receives in grant-in-aid, we turned that into ₤2.74p last year. That was because we were able to bring in students to study English, we were able to promote examinations, we won contracts through the European Commission and DfID, and we did work for the DfES, et cetera. I think if the grant were removed or reduced, it would also remove that ability to leverage those funds, which are so beneficial. I said in my opening remarks that we were the envy of a number of other countries. One of the strengths of the British Council is the fact that we cover a very wide canvas and the fact that we do English language teaching, promotion of British examinations and promotion of the UK as an education destination for higher educational and further education students; we do arts and culture and we work in governance and human rights. We do the whole gamut. The other countries have a very fragmented service, and so Germany would have it split into at least three different organisations to perform those same tasks. You can get tremendous cross-fertilisation. For instance I heard a statistic the other day that in Malaysia 63 per cent of those people coming in to study and learn English through our fee-paying language school say they want to go on and study at university in the UK. You get a lot of cross-fertilisation and benefit by having the whole canvas. I think the answer I would give is: no, it would be detrimental to the UK's interests. Q200 Mr Hamilton: Your Corporate Plan for 2006-08 predicts a small number of teaching centres which cannot be brought to break-even and that you are going to close those. Have you identified any of those centres? Sir David Green: Yes, we have. In recent months, we have looked at the whole of the teaching operation. I should just add, though, before I forget, that as well as doing the direct teaching for fee-paying students, we do a lot of work with ministries of education in helping them to reform and strengthen their own English language provision and work within their ministries of education to do teacher training, to work on textbook development and on curriculum reform. That is of course paid for by the grant. We looked at all our centres. We looked at those ones which were very effective in terms not only of making an impact but also bringing in revenue to the British Council. We have called those our business critical group. I think there is in the region of 40 of those. The ones that do extraordinary well are Spain and Hong Kong and centres like that. Then there is another group which is what we have called, and I do not like the phrase particularly, mission critical. They are not ones that are going to bring in a significant revenue to the British Council but they are important. If you take Saudi Arabia, for instance, a commercial operator of English language services could not operate in Saudi Arabia, but it is a very important way of getting to young Saudi Arabians. Whilst that manages to break even or, in recent years, has actually made a loss, we can manage that because this second group of mission critical can help each other. If one of them manages to make a small surplus, that can compensate for a loss in a country like Saudi Arabia. Then there are other ones, and there is a handful of those, where actually they are making a significant loss and the public diplomacy benefit of those is not that significant, and therefore we would close those. If you wanted me to write to you with a list of the ones that we are considering closing, then I would be happy to do that. Q201 Mr Hamilton: We would be interested in that. Finally, can I ask on the financial issue: our predecessor committee in 2004 visited Moscow and you will recall the problems we had there with the tax authorities and the raids and the rather unpleasant situation that your colleagues in Moscow had to put up with. Have we resolved those now? I know earlier this year there were all sorts of allegations of espionage and ghastly things going on, part of a wider game, I think. Have you resolved that? Sir David Green: I think so but you can never be entirely sure. The criminal case that was brought against our director in St Petersburg has now been dropped and we have had that in writing, so that is very good news. We have paid all the back tax that we were asked to pay, which comes to about ₤1.4 million. We have registered all of our centres across Russia. The discussions about the Cultural Centres Agreement, which is the next stage, was tied up with the status issue because we were for many years, if you remember, seeking to establish a Cultural Centres Agreement that would then legitimise our position in Russia. That is now on the table and we are in discussions with the Russians on that. We have given our comments and we are waiting for them to come back. There was a moment, a couple of months ago, when there was a threat to re-open the tax issue in Moscow, but that does not seem to have materialised. Q202 Mr Hamilton: By the way, are you happy that that ₤1.4 million is owed, or is that just a figure they demanded and you paid up? Do your accountants agree under their tax laws? Sir David Green: Martin was more centrally involved with this. Mr Davidson: We did look at that figure and draw on advice from international accountants to ensure that it did meet the best understanding of what the tax position is in Russia, which, as I am sure you know, is extremely complex, to really get inside. Yes, we felt it was a figure which we could understand. Sir David Green: We have had to close our teaching operation in St Petersburg and we had to move out of our building here, but we are, I am pleased to say, opening a new building. I will be there on Saturday when it is being opened by the Prime Minister. Ms Mayne: For the avoidance of doubt, it is important to record that that ₤1.4 million did not come from the grant-in-aid; it came from the fee-paying part of the activity. Q203 Mr Hamilton: It still came out of your general activities? Ms Mayne: Yes, it did. Q204 Chairman: On the question of the problem in Bahrain when money was fraudulently taken, will the British Council be paying that money to the Foreign Office? Sir David Green: The answer to that is yes, although the Foreign Office has accepted responsibility for some of it. They have accepted responsibility for ₤38,604 and we have accepted responsibility for ₤110,060. Q205 Chairman: On the issue of the general control of your money, how do we know that the ₤186 million that you get from the FCO is properly spent? We made a recommendation that the National Audit Office should perhaps be involved in accounting for public money. Do you have an attitude to that? Sir David Green: We would be very happy to have the NAO do a value-for-money audit, as proposed by the FCO. I know that they are considering that and will be writing to you shortly. We would certainly welcome it. I should say that we have just had our accounts audited by the NAO. That is the result you have in front of you. They spent some three weeks in the British Council looking over all our accounts. On occasions, they go overseas, and indeed they can go anywhere they want, to make sure that we are spending the money properly and in the way that we say we are. Ms Mayne: The big question is: how do you know whether ₤186 million is being spent properly. I think this annual report makes some attempt to show you not just that it is being spent in a way that is correct in line with procedures, which is what you would expect the NAO to tell you in their audit report, but also what value it is creating for Britain. It is important to say that it is about spending money correctly but also indeed spending it wisely. Q206 Chairman: We heard a few weeks ago that you are closing some of your outreach centres in the UK. Where are we on that? Linked to that, what is the staff reaction to these proposals and what are the implications in terms of cost? Why are you doing it and what will it mean? Sir David Green: The reason we are doing it is that we are doing a major change of the whole of the UK operations. If Sir John Stanley were here, he would be asking me about staff numbers. As part of what we call Strategy 2010, we feel the need to reorganise the UK operations in terms of making sure that we are as efficient as we can be and also that we have the right skills and competencies and the right people in terms of the sector areas where we need expertise. We are aiming to reduce by around 100 staff members on the grant side in the UK, from about 650 to 550. The Change programme will mean an increase in terms of the expertise levels in certain areas, particularly those where we want to concentrate and where we have said that we want to build our world authority reputation in cultural relations, international arts, international education, and English, those four areas where we still feel we need to build further our own cadre of expertise. Why are we going to close the UK regional network? This was built up to support students and particularly when we had the technical co-operation training programme for DfID where we were supporting something in the region of 20,000 students who came to the UK and needed to be looked after in their places of study. That figure, in terms of the scholarships that we manage, has reduced to about 3,000. That UK regional network is over-staffed in order to provide support for that level of scholarships. What has happened is that they have started to do other things which have been very useful things. We believe that what we really need to do in the UK regions is to build relationships with key partners within those regions, whether it is the regional development authorities or universities or whatever at a more senior level. We are going to be putting in place what we are calling relationship managers, who would have that responsibility. They do not necessarily have to be based in all the regions around England. Going back to what the functioning of the current members of staff is, a lot more of that work can now be done electronically in terms of providing email support to students and that can be done from Manchester or from London or from one of our centres in Edinburgh, Belfast or Cardiff. Q207 Chairman: In your Annual Report you have some information about staff attitudes in a staff survey but it is only limited information. Could you make more detailed information about staff responses available to us? Sir David Green: Yes. Could I say first say that we have had a very good response rate to our staff survey? MORI conducted that for us and they were very surprised that for the third time running we actually increased levels of people responding: 73 per cent of all staff responded to the survey, which is very high. On the positive side, there is a feeling that there is a very strong sense of team work where they work: 68 per cent felt that. They felt that their managers had listened to them: we had a score of 79 per cent on that. The respondents feel that managers respond to their concerns: 74 per cent. Where we were less strong was in terms of people feeling absolutely clear what it was that we were seeking to do as an organisation in terms of the Change programme and Strategy 2010. There was a drop in the confidence of the UK senior management team to 40 per cent from 43 per cent, which is a worry to me but I think is mitigated by the fact that there has been so much change and that obviously creates a certain amount of uncertainty. Q208 Chairman: To save time, could you send us more detailed information? Sir David Green: Yes. The public sector norm is 33 per cent as against the 40. Can I respond to the question that I was asked by Ms Stuart at the beginning, which I said I would come back to? I will be very brief. I am afraid I cannot answer your question as to what I would not have done but I will write to you on that subject. In terms of what I would have done, thinking back and having the time again, I would have been braver in terms of moving faster in terms of the Change programme. The British Council is such an important organisation and I feel very passionate about what it can achieve as an organisation on behalf of the UK that some of the changes that we have made I would like to have made earlier on in order that we could maximise the impacts and be even more effective than we are currently. Q209 Chairman: I switch now to your role in accreditation of English as a foreign language schools. There has been concern expressed in the past, including by this committee at one time as well, about the lack of regulation in that area. As a constituency MP I know this because I have had places closed down recently in my constituency. Some people from India have spent thousands of pounds on fake colleges which they did not know. They have been ripped off by people who then reproduce a website in a slightly different name which looks glossy and they make thousands of pounds more out of people in India. Do you think the time has come for mandatory regulation as such for private schools? Could the British Council be a body or the body involved in doing that? Sir David Green: We believe that the time has come and we very much welcome the DfES move to go for compulsory accreditation. I am thankful that none of the visa scams have been perpetrated, to the best of my knowledge, in any of the schools that the British Council has accredited. To explain the context, it is estimated that there are 1,400 English language schools around the UK. We are the key accreditation body, which we do on behalf of English UK and 398 of those 1,400-only 398-are accredited through us. There are one or two other smaller schemes around and between 100 and 150 other schools are accredited through those schemes. We would certainly be very much in favour and we think it would be in the interests of the English language sector and also in the interests of the UK's reputation overseas if there was a compulsory accreditation system. Chairman: Thank you. We have covered quite a wide range of questions today. I am grateful and I appreciate your patience while there was a vote. No doubt we will see you again at some point. I am not sure, Sir David, whether you will come before us but I am sure we will see you in some other capacity. We wish you all the very best. [1] Sir David Green was referring to the British Council's Annual Report for 2005-06 |