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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 903-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

 

 

WEDNesday 8 FEBRUARY 2006

 

LORD CARTER OF COLES

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 68

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 8 February 2006

Members present

Mike Gapes, in the Chair

Mr Fabian Hamilton

Mr John Horam

Mr Eric Illsley

Mr Paul Keetch

Mr John Maples

Sandra Osborne

Mr Ken Purchase

Sir John Stanley

Ms Gisela Stuart

________________

Witness: Lord Carter of Coles, a Member of the House of Lords, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Welcome. Lord Carter, thank you very much for coming along this afternoon. We asked you to come because some time ago we took evidence from the British Council and the BBC World Service, as part of our general review of the FCO's Annual Report and its funding of various organisations. At that time we were told that your report on the Review of Public Diplomacy was imminent; and, clearly, in October, when we were taking that evidence we had hoped that we would be able to deal with it at that time; but we are now doing it at the moment because the report was published towards the end of last year. There was a review of public diplomacy called the Wilton Review in 2002. Why was it necessary to have another review so soon afterwards?

Lord Carter of Coles: The Wilton Review took things a certain way forward, in the sense that prior to that review the activities of the FCO, the British Council and the World Service, were not as joined up as people thought they should be. The Wilton Review pointed the way to the formation of the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board. As that went on, people began to wonder whether even more alignment of interests were necessary. That is what I was asked to look at; it was really building on progress made from the Wilton Report.

Q2 Chairman: How did you see your role as chairman of this review?

Lord Carter of Coles: Really trying to look at what was happening first of all, trying to get an understanding of what the issues were and to see whether the system could be made to work better and see whether we get any improvements.

Q3 Chairman: I have already referred to the fact that we were expecting a report around the September, as I was told at one point, and then October. Why was there a delay in publication?

Lord Carter of Coles: I suppose there are always two types of these sorts of reports. There are those which are quite elegant but do not often get people to agree to what to do, and they seem to find their way on to the shelves of Whitehall; and there are those which are trying to be more helpful and take a bit of perseverance to get people to agree to work in a way which may get an outcome; and I think we chose the latter route, and inevitably there were strong views at various parts of the process. By discussing those with the key players we managed to get something that had a wider body of support, so it did take some more time.

Q4 Chairman: Was that a difficult process? Is that why it took so long?

Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, because I think we are dealing with some very powerful players, with very strong positions and very clear views. Trying to get agreement was not the easiest thing all the time - that is right.

Q5 Chairman: Is there a real agreement now or is this a kind of holding position for continuation of the debate?

Lord Carter of Coles: I like to think, of course, but you will form your own view, that there was agreement. What I really was not prepared to go forward with was a sense that this is a "we generally all accept this; thank you very much". I wanted a little more assurance that people accepted some of the detail, or a reason why I should withdraw that detailed recommendation.

Q6 Chairman: When you were asked to do this job were you given a clear sense of what the Foreign and Commonwealth Office wanted and what the Treasury wanted - or maybe they wanted exactly the same - out of this?

Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, I think they wanted greater clarity; that was my sense of it. Here was something we were spending a lot of money on, £600 million, and we were in this post 9/11 world where things were changing. Was the organisation that had been put in place sufficiently agile to respond, and was the money being spent in the most effective way?

Q7 Mr Horam: Why are you so suspicious of the British Council?

Lord Carter of Coles: I hate to answer a question with a question, but why would you think?

Q8 Mr Horam: From your recommendation that the FCO and the Council should together develop proposals with an appropriate degree of oversight. It already had one institution put in place by the Wilton Review; so you want even more. It must be that you are very suspicious of the British Council.

Lord Carter of Coles: With respect, I do not think that follows, no. This was, if you like, an evolution saying that what people needed to do was to be much more co-ordinated in what they did in each country and get those activities co-ordinated. I would not like to leave that impression.

Q9 Mr Horam: Would that imply they are not co-ordinated and they are not doing what the Foreign Office wants them to do?

Lord Carter of Coles: No, I think it would be a matter of both sides understanding what the other thought. I do not think it was that way round. The British Council has a huge amount of experience in the field, which could interact with the Foreign Office as well. I do not think this is a one-way thing at all.

Q10 Mr Horam: Let me put it another way: why has the British Council system as we have had it, with what the Wilton Review recommended on top, not working?

Lord Carter of Coles: If you look on a country-by-country basis, as we did at expenditure and commitment in various things, the question is: do these things operate in self-defining silos, or is there some means of joining them up? If you look back, historically there was often a historical definition of why each of those organisations may have behaved in the way they did, but often without reference to each other.

Q11 Mr Horam: Why does the British Council not join them up? You are saying they may be operating differently in silos in different countries - the British Council, presumably, has its own strategy and its own priorities and it does co-ordinate, and it must do.

Lord Carter of Coles: It does, but the question of co-ordination of strategy from the Foreign Office, in the sense of the priority within a country - first of all the actual choice of countries that are prioritised is important, so in a hierarchy where public diplomacy should be practised with public money.

Q12 Mr Horam: Do you think the Foreign Office should have a bigger say in deciding that?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think the Foreign Office should set the strategy in discussion with its partners, because they bring something to the table.

Q13 Mr Horam: They were never doing that before.

Lord Carter of Coles: I do not think it was done as thoroughly as it should have been, no. That is why I made the recommendation.

Q14 Mr Horam: Even though the Wilton Committee had set up a body to do that?

Lord Carter of Coles: No, if you look at the workings of the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board, it was very much something that was very, very high level, with very broad themes. I was talking more about the issue country-by-country, the dialogue about what was going on in a country and the effect of the combined efforts of a large amount of money being spent; how that impacted on the country and what was each partner bringing to that?

Q15 Mr Horam: Can you give me an example? All this is rather general, and something was going wrong. Do you have some examples in mind of where things were going wrong?

Lord Carter of Coles: I can think of examples where things change rapidly. Pakistan would be an interesting example. The British Council, with the security issues in Pakistan, had to shut its shop front; it could not be there for security reasons. That was a transitional thing. Its main activity in Pakistan after 9/11 was in running exams. That is educationally a very valuable thing, but it was constrained to some degree in what it could do in its ordinary communication. One would say, "we would like to get it down the Internet and things like that" - in a situation like that, would it be more appropriate for money to have been spent by the BBC in that market where there was a constraint. It is those sorts of discussions that are interesting, and it is the whole-country impact of this total endeavour.

Q16 Mr Horam: The Treasury had a role in all of this. Was there a concern about the financing of the British Council, that it was wasting money?

Lord Carter of Coles: No, that was not a view.

Q17 Sandra Osborne: So it was all to do with strategy and not to do with the Treasury concern about whether you were getting value for money from the British Council?

Lord Carter of Coles: No, it was never raised with me. The question, "Are we spending all the money effectively?" was raised with me. It was not a specific concern about the British Council, no.

Q18 Mr Horam: So your recommendations are all about having more Foreign Office control over the nitty-gritty, country-by-country, of what the British Council did.

Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, absolutely, allocation of resources - not control. I think this is one point I really want to speak to: it was not control; it was about better co-ordination.

Q19 Mr Horam: Better co-ordination inside a country or between how you spend the money between different countries?

Lord Carter of Coles: Both, because we are in a very dynamic situation. It is the movement of money from, in the case of the BBC, eastern Europe into Arab territories or something like that. There are huge rapid changes going on, and those do need to be co-ordinated and resources moved around, and within countries as in the Pakistan example.

Q20 Chairman: In your recommendations you did not recommend a particular model of control. You said that the FCO and the British Council should together develop proposals for an appropriate degree of oversight, and how the FCO and British Council dialogue might better operate in practice. Why did you not recommend a particular way forward yourself?

Lord Carter of Coles: I suppose, Chairman, going back to an earlier point, I wanted to publish the report. This is something that -----

Q21 Chairman: Are you telling me then that there was no agreement?

Lord Carter of Coles: No. There was broad agreement. Then, after that, we wanted to be pretty clear how it would work. The detail of how these two organisations are going to sit down between themselves - are they going to meet once a month or once a quarter and what the agenda should be, is something they should settle.

Q22 Chairman: Do you have a view yourself, though, as to how this relationship between the dialogue between the FCO and the British Council should be developed?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think the shape of it, yes, in the sense of establishing the priorities in terms of, first, which countries we spend money on. That is a very important dialogue. Then, within country, it is a question of the relevant channels to be used, and then very, very critically, what is the effect of it. People need to sit down and look at that in any performance management system and say, "we surveyed the opinions of people in this country and we have spent all this money, aiming off for big events, and actually we have improved" or "our rating is going down". It is that dialogue I was keen to see people having.

Q23 Mr Maples: Whenever we go anywhere we try to see the British Council and sometimes we come away with an impression that a very few people are doing a fantastic job, and then sometimes we come away wondering what the hell they are sending people to do. I may have missed it in your report, but have you formed any view of whether, as taxpayers, we are getting good value for money out of the British Council and/or the BBC World Service for that matter? I think we are happier, probably, with the World Service than the British Council. Perhaps that is not really part of your ...

Lord Carter of Coles: No, it was not part of - obviously, because I went to look. When we spoke to other countries, everybody was envious that we had the British Council and World Service, and it was quite interesting comparing, so from that point of view there was recognition. Are we getting good value? The answer is that generally we are. How you would measure good value is the thing that I was exercised by. I was very keen to recommend that we did return to surveying what people thought of us in those countries, and to start consistently over time to do that and to try and understand which interventions the British Council and the World Service made actually had a better effect. One of the problems is that we do not know - in the case of the British Council we know the number of people coming to British universities, the number of examinations, the number of visits and the numbers visiting the website and things like that - we need to start measuring those over time and then try and understand what drives them.

Q24 Mr Maples: Are you aware of any study that has been done on value for money of the British Council?

Lord Carter of Coles: No.

Q25 Mr Maples: You seem to be suggesting that some work along those lines should be done in the future.

Lord Carter of Coles: It is something that needs looking at. Part of designing this was to have a dialogue that was based less on assertion and more on fact.

Q26 Mr Maples: Do you not think that the British Council is a hangover from the cold war? Now, with modern communications and the multiplicity of broadcasting channels and the availability of information on the Internet, do you really think it is necessary to have hundreds of people working in the Soviet Union in the British Council, putting on rather obscure plays that a few people go to watch in English and a library that hardly anybody ever seems to visit?

Lord Carter of Coles: People did put in the Hamlet in Alexandria question; it was something we thought a lot about. If you look at the amount of money spent on those endeavours, they are relatively small. The big value-added services to me of the British Council were, first of all, obviously, teaching the English language.

Q27 Mr Maples: Is that not done by commercial enterprises?

Lord Carter of Coles: It is, and I think that the Council needs to continually monitor if that service can be provided by people. If you look at markets they are withdrawing from in Japan, they have left Osaka and now that is done by the private sector. If you look at the expansion of teaching English in the world, their market share has declined because the private sector providers have done that. In benchmarking terms I think there is a role, but it needs to be continually reviewed. That is a question that should be looked at all the time. At this moment, in the places where they do it very well, it is self-financing and also it does help our cause for low cost. If it became a burden, we would have to suggest that people looked at it again.

Q28 Mr Maples: When the BBC World Service Chief Executive appeared before us, we heard that they are financing their Arab television service to the tune of £20 million, which is pretty small money world TV, and they are having to cut down on services in all sorts of other countries to do that. There is an argument whether those other services were necessary, but I also wonder whether we should not just shift £20 million from the British Council budget to the World Service to do it. Do you think the British Council would - do you think it would really, really notice the absence of that £20 million that the British Council -----

Lord Carter of Coles: I think so, yes. I think they would notice it.

Q29 Mr Maples: I did not say would "they" notice it; I said would "we" notice it. They would notice it, I am sure.

Lord Carter of Coles: Whether "big" here is - you would have to take chunks off. If you look at where the money goes, it is education - you would have to take £5 million, say, if you split it four ways - say 5 million on four things. I think it would just leave a hole in educational recruitment in this country, which would be detrimental; so I think it is value-added. I think the better solution is for the BBC to re-prioritise, as you suggested, and take the 20 million out of that.

Q30 Ms Stuart: Can I pursue something you started with. Whilst it was no part of your remit, you must have formed an opinion during the course of your work. If I were to ask you now what is the point of the British Council, what would you say?

Lord Carter of Coles: We had quite a debate about this. I think probably its greatest contribution is in education, in getting people to come to British universities and into higher education; and it is a major effort. I do not want to answer by default, but if the British Council did not do it, somebody would have to do it, and I think they do it in a skilful way. The teaching of English we have talked about: it is a valuable thing, but given alternatives it would not command a large public subsidy in my view, so that is important. In terms of culture, it spends 25 million on the arts. There are differing views. My own view is that it is very useful in positioning this country. If we look at the money the French spend, for instance, on their schools abroad and the great cultural drive in China, it costs significantly more and I think has a lesser effect. A cultural positioning helps the country, and I think then it pushes through into things like tourism. If, on the other hand, someone were to suggest spending £50 million or £60 million a year on culture, that would be a harder thing to defend.

Q31 Ms Stuart: That raises two further questions. If you make comparisons with the French, I do not think these are true comparisons because France is the only driver for the French language on the international scene, whereas we are not the only driver for English. Given that the British Council even thinks displaying the Union Jack is something terribly retrograde, there is a problem. Much more importantly - because part of your recommendations in terms of looking at how the board is appointed, the roles of the Permanent Secretary and the Foreign Office - if the British Council's primary function, for which the British taxpayer does receive benefit, is in the area of education, there is not in that sense the need for once-removed from government, as you could argue for the World Service. What is your preferred notion or model of how the British Council should be accountable?

Lord Carter of Coles: I have asked myself a lot of questions about the status of NDPBs and this arm's length question. In the case of the British Council, its arm's length position in certain cases has proved useful. It lets it have that necessary distance at some difficult times in certain countries. That has stood us in good stead, and I could not see any benefit in removing that. It is a nice piece of positioning, and it does contribute to the most important thing, which is for the World Service and the British Council that trust rating, which would be very hard to recreate if it were too close.

Q32 Ms Stuart: Do you really think it is comparable? The BBC is the provider of the news and therefore needs to be independent; the British Council is the conveyor of British art and language.

Lord Carter of Coles: I do. My own view is probably the same thing exactly: the BBC is the same thing in a way - the airtime - it is British culture, art and language. I think they are doing the same thing, and that sense of independence is very important.

Q33 Ms Stuart: In relation to the role of the Permanent Secretary, what do you think would be the ideal role, because you raised the issue of conflict of interest?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think it is a conflict of interest, yes. I have a sense from that that would probably be better - it is a difficult position to adopt. I think the board should represent itself and not have conflicts.

Q34 Ms Stuart: A board completely appointed by the Foreign Secretary -----

Lord Carter of Coles: At the moment the board has twelve members. There would be a case for the Foreign Secretary appointing some additional, or some of the retired members. On the other hand, as in most other organisations, there should be a nominations committee that brings some independent people. To our earlier point, you cannot have it both ways: you cannot have a board absolutely appointed by - if you wish to maintain that. What I am really trying to pursue is the sense of alignment and accountability; and it is getting the alignment of all these activities focused on something.

Q35 Sir John Stanley: Lord Carter, did you form any view as to the balance of the staffing within the British Council between the number based in the UK and the numbers overseas; and did you form any view as to whether the British Council might be, rather surprisingly, overstaffed as far as its UK staff was concerned?

Lord Carter of Coles: I did not look at that; I was not looking at the economics in that sense. I was surprised, I should say, when I read Lord Kinnock's evidence to you of 1,500 people in the UK, or a larger number than I had thought.

Q36 Sandra Osborne: To go back to the appointment of the board members, I can appreciate what you are saying about seeking alignment, but is there not a danger that that would result in obvious political interference at an unacceptable level?

Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, and that is the thing we have to be really mindful of. I would not like to see either of these organisations criticised because that would be wrong. On the other hand, I think you need the appointment of people who - how can I put it; you need a bit more of a challenging board. I think you get that with some appointed in some way and some appointed in another way; that might be a useful mechanism.

Q37 Sandra Osborne: You have identified the need for a greater sense of urgency amongst public diplomacy partners, and more evidence that they are capable of responding and shifting resources according to priorities and changing circumstances. How successful did the review team find the Council to be at shifting resources according to priorities and changing circumstances?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think historically more so, but it still needs attention. There is a slowness to realign services. I am trying to think of an example to give you. We found a number of times where we could have been quicker off the mark in doing that. The abiding one is the World Service in the sense of coming out of eastern Europe. It is just realising where things are going and getting on it quickly and redeploying the money that is the critical thing.

Chairman: Can we move on to some questions about the BBC World Service and then we will come back to the structural issues later on.

Q38 Mr Hamilton: Can I follow up some points made by John Maples and Gisela Stuart. John Maples mentioned the desire, and in fact intention, of the BBC World Service to set up its Arab television satellite service. When Nigel Chapman gave evidence to this Committee late last year, we followed that through and asked him about other possible satellite services, for example one in Persia, which would be quite appropriate right now. In response, Nigel Chapman told the Committee that there was a limit to how far the World Service can go in re-prioritising its existing budget in order to meet new ambitious challenges that it has to face if it is going to be effective. Lord Carter, how do you think the FCO could better ensure that the World Service's strategic objectives and priorities are compatible with the policies and priorities of the Foreign Office; and indeed should they be; should there not be some divergence? What is your view on this?

Lord Carter of Coles: I return to that re-prioritisation from eastern Europe, which has let us finance Arab TV, and the fact that we probably should have done it sooner - the Americans were out of eastern Europe three years before us, which I think is significant! In relation to the question of priorities as set by the FCO, clearly Arab TV and Persia, and Urdu services, which the Americans have introduced, are things that should be looked at because of the changing emphasis. Should the BBC be totally aligned? No; I think there will always be some slight difference of interpretation in these things. Fundamentally, in the broad thrust of things they have to be aligned because it is a question of the government choosing where it wants to take policy, and this is a tool of public diplomacy - "public" being the word. Therefore government has to have some say in that, I believe.

Q39 Mr Hamilton: In that case, why do you think that the FCO did not persuade the BBC World Service to take these steps sooner? Was that a lack of proper dialogue between the FCO and the World Service? Are the mechanisms for oversight and dialogue good enough?

Lord Carter of Coles: Pursuing the example I gave, probably were not. One of the recommendations obviously is to get that better, to get things to happen quicker.

Q40 Mr Hamilton: Do you believe the suggestions you have put forward will do that?

Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, because we will start to get information and evidence about what is happening. Once that is there, it makes it easier to have the debate.

Q41 Mr Hamilton: Do you think that the BBC World Service should pull out of more local language services in order to fund further TV ventures, like the Persian and Urdu services? Is radio a dying medium?

Lord Carter of Coles: No, not at all; on the contrary. It is the right sort of radio of course! I think short wave is dying, but FM is absolutely critical. The issue for the BBC is to get FM Drivetime radio into the right countries. Other foreign language TV services - it is one step at a time; let us get Arab TV working and prove that it can meet its projections; let us see if we get the audience. Then we can see how the Americans got on with the Urdu service. I think they have done two hours of Persian, and we will see how those things evolved. Then a decision can be taken.

Q42 Sir John Stanley: Do you think that in the balance of advantage it was right to slash the vernacular services in the way that has happened in order to be able to accommodate the Arabic television service?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think it was right to slash the vernacular services, yes, because the world has moved on. The listing figures were no longer there and reaching the target audiences, and I think that was right. Separately, I think Arab TV probably stands on its own as a case anyway, given everything that is happening in the world; so I would not necessarily want to link those two. I think it was a good decision to stop that. They could have done anything with the money, and I think it is a good decision to invest in Arab TV.

Q43 Sir John Stanley: Do you think that we should continue the system whereby the BBC World Service remains a grant-funded body through the FCO? Given the strategic importance to us of the World Service, would it be better off in direct receipt of a direct government grant and not be put into a position where there may be tension within the FCO, which is that the more given in grant to the World Service means less for the FCO to spend on its own opening up of embassies and running its own department?

Lord Carter of Coles: Within the review we did think about other homes for these various organisations, but given the need to align it - because we are spending the money in pursuit of the wider government aims of having a good image in these countries - probably the only place it can rest is the FCO.

Q44 Sir John Stanley: It could be funded directly and not be dependent on the grant it receives from a specific government department, and obviate the inherent tension in the present situation, as I have expressed it, that the more given to the World Service is less for the rest of the FCO.

Lord Carter of Coles: I think the ring-fence attempts to deal with that, and it has removed some of that. Everybody thinks they can spend everybody else's money better, do they not? That is a fact of life. My sense, looking around, is that that is the most practical sponsoring department for it.

Q45 Chairman: Can I take you back to the report and your recommendations. I am unclear as to why, although you are recommending establishment of a new public diplomacy strategy management board, there is still continuation of the previous public diplomacy strategy board. Your report states on page 5, paragraph 10: "The review team found that the various members of the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board made valuable contributions to the overall public diplomacy effort." Is this a face-saver for people who have been there and served for a long time and who would be unhappy to have their role taken away from them, or does it mean you are creating a really unusual structure whereby you are keeping in existence something that was only established in 2002 but bringing in alongside it a completely new organisation? I am unclear as to why you have not just said, "this body is abolished; this is the new one".

Lord Carter of Coles: It is manageability really. The existing Public Strategy Diplomacy Board is large and is representative; it has people involved with administrations and people from a huge range of government departments. It does not conduct business. It actually seeks to inform and to share, and do those things. That does have a valuable role. We wondered whether that same body could take on the tighter strategy performance management role we envisaged, and concluded not; but we thought that had a value. Therefore, with the two structures one feeds into the other; but to drive the change it is the board we are proposing that we seek doing that. I would be reluctant to recommend not getting people together.

Q46 Chairman: The previous body, which continues, has been chaired by the Permanent Secretary, Sir Michael Jay; the new body will be chaired by an independent figure.

Lord Carter of Coles: By a minister.

Q47 Chairman: Are we now moving, in a sense, to a more detailed political control of the public diplomacy as opposed to a bureaucratic control to make sure that your money is spent properly and, as an accounting officer he is content with procedures and can ensure that the Treasury boxes have all been ticked and are all green and not red? Is this an attempt to say, "we are not entirely happy that we have sufficient things joined up, and therefore there is going to be a political lead from the top"?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think it is to get an ownership of it, to see that there is a strategy. There is a series of silos sitting there; it is to get a strategy that says, "this is generally where we want to go and this is what we are getting back for it". To the accounting officer point, it is a different matter; that the money is accounted for correctly and the boxes are ticked. That is not quite the same as driving something to meet government targets.

Q48 Chairman: Do you think the Foreign Secretary has time to spend on doing this, given all the other commitments he has?

Lord Carter of Coles: I do not think it was envisaged that the Foreign Secretary would do this; I think it would be another minister.

Q49 Chairman: So the number 4 in the department who is also trade minister or who at the moment deals with some areas of this kind - is that what you are thinking; or the minister for Latin America and -----

Lord Carter of Coles: It is obviously up to the department to determine that. Perhaps I can put it the other way. When you are spending £600 million in a very important time, on balance of responsibility - and I happen to believe public diplomacy is effective - you want to make sure that that is as important as some other things and send that message.

Q50 Chairman: How will the new Public Diplomacy Board relate to the British Council's own board?

Lord Carter of Coles: I suppose I would summarise it by saying: what, where and how, in the sense of who does what. The things that the board, in my view, should concentrate on are where things are done, i.e., which countries in these priority times, and how they are done in those countries. It is the question of the different channels and how we do this, what should be emphasised and what is working. However, what should be done, how it should be operated, or, in the case of the BBC, what the editorial independence is, should be a matter for the board and the British Council and indeed the BBC. It is that separation. One is strategic - "this is where we are going to go and we are making sure in measurement terms that we are going there".

Q51 Mr Keetch: You say in your report that in relation to the public diplomacy strategy there is a gap and that we need a comprehensive mid-term plan over a three to five-year period. Can you explain how you envisage creating that and how that would tie not just into the British Council and the BBC but to all the other bodies that are involved in public diplomacy - the Ministry of Defence, the Scottish Executive now even?

Lord Carter of Coles: There seemed to us to be two things happening. There are the very long-term steady committed things - we are broadcasting in this language to that country on FM, or trying to do this or that. On the other hand, there are various initiatives the whole time, which appear - "we are going to have a campaign here or do something there". There did not appear to be anything in the middle; in other words, what would our commitment to this country look like in three or five years' time, and what would we expect that to be doing for us in terms of our ratings? It was that really, saying that while we all like initiatives, are they paying off, and what are they really designed to do in this country - we have done this and we have done that but where has it led us? It is a matter of joining that up. That then gives the other players an opportunity to build into that; so if DCMS is proposing something and active in that area, or the Scottish Executive, one can say, "this is where we really think this is going over five years; what do you feel your input could be?" as opposed to somebody saying, "we think we are going to sponsor a fair here; let's have a quick phone-round". It is about getting a measured view of what should be done in each country.

Q52 Mr Keetch: Do you think those other players, like DCMS or the Scottish Executive, will take this on board; or do they increasingly have their own agendas to pursue overseas?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think they will take it on board if the organisation, the FCO and the British Council and World Service are effective partners in helping them do it. If this becomes effective, they will use it as a delivery chain to help them meet their objectives, but if it is ineffectual they will by-pass it and pursue their own ends.

Q53 Mr Keetch: Where the danger comes is if they start to go down their own -----

Lord Carter of Coles: You get fragmentation, and then it is government money going in lots of different ways; and probably it needs to be focused and brigaded.

Q54 Mr Keetch: Do you think there is a waste of resources across UK plc generally, because we certainly see, as we travel around the world, the Scottish Executive doing things, trying to promote Scotland - which I have no objection to at all, but nevertheless in a way that does not seem to be beneficial to UK plc generally?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think a little more co-ordination would not be out of order.

Q55 Mr Keetch: Would you like to elaborate as to you think might be -----

Lord Carter of Coles: No, I would not. That is the point. Why people do not do it is because they think that is not going to work for them. You have got to make these things work for them, and then people will use it.

Q56 Mr Horam: You propose, Lord Carter, a new unit to measure performance and monitoring. You say you want this because the existing measures are very standardised. Would it not have been easier to say to the British Council, "get your act together; get some standardised things, and we will be watching you do that", rather than proposing a new unit. I worry again that it will be just top-heavy bureaucracy.

Lord Carter of Coles: I certainly did not want to create a bureaucracy. I hope it is going to be a very small unit.

Q57 Mr Horam: It will still be a unit -----

Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, but the alternative was - there has to be somewhere where the information is obtained; where they make sure the information is coming and presents it in a codified form, and has the information from differing sources. Whilst the British Council is standardising its stuff, as is the World Service, and we know what the FCO and other departments spend, it is getting it into a format on a country-by-country basis.

Q58 Mr Horam: Can the British Council not do that? Is it incapable because they have accountants and people -----

Lord Carter of Coles: It can do it for the British Council, but I do not think it could do it for the BBC World Service.

Q59 Mr Horam: You would expect them to do it as well and have two lots of people doing it.

Lord Carter of Coles: that is right, and so all this unit does is co-ordinate all those and put them together.

Q60 Mr Horam: It sounds like an extra piece of bureaucracy to me, taking more money -----

Lord Carter of Coles: No, because if you believe, as I do, in performance management, they have got to get the information somewhere in a format that those who can influence it can read it and interrogate it. I think that for 600 million, four people probably pulling some information together.

Q61 Mr Horam: I do not know about four!

Lord Carter of Coles: I am saying four - I do not want to tie people's hands, but I would hope it would not be too many more than that. Actually getting that information together for the size of the spend, placing it before the decision-makers in a format that is useful and which can be gone back to time after time to hold them accountable, I hope will prove useful.

Q62 Mr Keetch: On page 17 you have come up with this lovely expression "dumping code" for allocating resources. Do you think the FCO manage that in a financial structure way very well or do you think there are improvements that could be made there to ensure hat this money is well spent? As you say, a lot of money is being spent out there. We do not always see the direct results and direct benefits of that.

Lord Carter of Coles: No, I think one should start measurement and asking for these things. People pay more attention to it, and that is hopefully what will happen, as people say, "you have these many people working on this country and we are spending this much money", just as one would say to the British Council or the World Service, "We are spending this money; what are we getting?" I would hope that the same unit would say to the FCO, "you have got these people; what are they actually doing?"

Q63 Mr Keetch: You mentioned earlier that Britain is the envy of other countries because of the World Service and the British Council. Do you get the impression that the money we spend on public diplomacy across the board is regarded by our partners as money well spent for Britain, and do you get the impression that other countries appear to be able to spend their money more precisely and better than we do?

Lord Carter of Coles: I think other countries think we have a good buy. The trust rating of the BBC is a real national resource, and that is invaluable. On the differentiation point, the council is regarded as - the "of Britain but not in the government" point is well positioned. There are interesting differences. The Americans take the view that it is broadcasting and scholarships is how you should conduct public diplomacy, because they feel they can measure them much better. There are different ways of coming at this, but I think on balance ours has the right mixture.

Q64 Mr Keetch: Would that be something that we could learn from the Americans, and are there other countries that we could look at? Gisela pointed out earlier that we have the benefit of the English language, which other people are promoting as well as us, even the Americans. Are there things that we could learn from other countries?

Lord Carter of Coles: Yes, I think so. As I say, the Americans have been a lot faster in and out of things and being more responsive. If you look at other players, though, the French do spend quite a lot of money but spend it differently, and I do not think to as great effect as we spend our money. The Germans spend some money but nothing like the same amount. There are not a lot of people that are big in public diplomacy.

Q65 Chairman: To pull it altogether, your report recommends that your strategy and performance monitoring arrangements should be introduced as part of the budgeting exercise for 2006-07; that full data collection should begin from April 2007; and that arrangements should be reviewed in 2008 with consideration of more radical options if necessary. You also leave open the future of Wilton Park. Clearly, there are certain intangibles and question marks in the next two or three years. Do you think it is likely that you are going to be called back to carry out another review, or a review of a review, or somebody else is going to be called in to do something more radical with this area?

Lord Carter of Coles: Chairman, I would hope that the information that starts to come up to the people responsible for this will let them take those decisions now. One of the problems with this was actually getting information, and getting in a format that you could come to - how many people were engaged in the FCO; exactly how much money was spent in Pakistan and how much money was spent in this country. Getting that together and building in information system - I would hope that the way forward becomes much more obvious to those who are responsible for us. I would hope not to be asked back ----

Q66 Chairman: But who is responsible?

Lord Carter of Coles: I suppose the Foreign Secretary is responsible to Parliament.

Q67 Chairman: Ultimately therefore this is not a matter for the British Council or the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board or all these other structures that are going to be established or are presently in existence. Is that what you are saying?

Lord Carter of Coles: I wanted to be a bit clearer on the hard wiring which ran from the Foreign Secretary to these organisations when he can be called to Parliament to account for this, and I think some of the linkages historically have not been as clear as they needed to be.

Q68 Mr Horam: Having done all this work and made some interesting international comparisons in relation to the French, the Germans and the Americans, did you come away with the view, "if I had my way, I would double the money on this sort of thing because it is so valuable". We know that in the modern world the brand image of a country is very important. Did you think that, or did you think that this is about right, or whatever?

Lord Carter of Coles: Actually, I did think about that. I thought this was well-resourced. If you look at the United States expenditure on broadcasting, it is about $560 million or $600 million. Relatively world power of those things - they spend per capita less. We are well resourced in this area, but we get good value for it.

Chairman: Thank you very much. We are very grateful to you for coming along and helping us to begin to understand a little bit better the complexities of the area. We will be producing our report in the near future on the Annual Report of the FCO, and no doubt we will touch on this in that process.