Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-35)
MARTIN DAVIDSON,
GERARD LEMOS
AND SUE
BEAUMONT
4 NOVEMBER 2009
Chairman: That would be helpful.
Gerard Lemos: Perhaps I can come
in on this. It is perhaps worth noting that all the numbers you
have been asking about all point to the bigger strategic shift
that we have tried to make in the Council over the years, certainly
those in which I have been involved. Five or six years ago, the
Council did very little work with young people. Now we engage
with thousands and thousands of young people—millions—but
directly engage. That shift to working with young people and focusing
on what one might describe as some of the tougher and more difficult
countries is, in effect, producing some of the negative consequences
that you are describing because of choices we have made. I would
say that they are the right choices and are about where we deploy
our resources and on what kind of programmes. Sue Beaumont has
been working in Pakistan, for example, and there has been a massive
increase in our work with young people. That is obviously very
important, but the money to do that has to come from somewhere.
One of the answers to where it comes from is northern Europe.
Chairman: We understand your problem.
Q20 Sir John Stanley: You
are making this massive geographical shift of a third of your
resources out of Europe into what you take to be higher priority
areas. When we discussed this with you last year, you said that
you were going to maintain the level of funding in Bulgaria, Romania
and Turkey and that you were actually going to increase the funding
into the western Balkans. Do those exceptions apply still a year
later today?
Martin Davidson: Yes, they do.
We recognise that there is a very clear distinction to be made
between western European countries and those new accession countries,
the immediate European neighbourhood and the west Balkans. We
are making a significant shift and change in the west Balkans.
It is a difficult area for us to operate in; for example, there
has been some criticism of our decision to close our library in
Belgrade, but it was taken on the basis that we would, by using
those same resources, open two new libraries—one in Novi
Sad and the other in Kragujevac, Serbia's second and third largest
cities—because we are worried about the way in which we
focus on a small number of the larger cities in that region and
the feeling that the sort of services that we offer are best delivered
if we try to deliver them more widely across the region. That
move out of large centres in capital cities alone into a wider
range of services to a broader range of people in the second and
third tier cities would be a continuing part of our strategy for
the region.
Q21 Sir John Stanley: Can
I go from recent accession countries to countries that are more
or less down the accession path, to countries that are looking
towards the EU, but have not really begun the process very much
at all? I wish to ask you about Ukraine, Moldova—where I
was in the first two days of this week; you may be interested
to know that, quite spontaneously, it was said to me in Moldova
that the British Council could very easily run self-financing
English language teaching—and Georgia. Have you got your
eyes on those countries because they are three very important
countries, which are all on the edge of going eastwards or westwards
and where the British Council could have a very valuable role
to play?
Martin Davidson: We are very conscious
of all three. Ukraine is a very important location for us, and
we have a substantial presence there, including in some of the
other cities. Georgia again is an important operation for us,
and Operation Tbilisi is a well-founded one. Moldova is a country
where we have not operated with a stand-alone operation. We have
over time done a small amount of work out of our Romania operation
there. I admit that I have been cautious about taking on another
country. I take the view that one of the biggest problems the
British Council had back in the '90s and the early part of this
century was our constant expansion with smaller resources. I have
taken the view that we should not open new country operations
unless we are prepared to close another operation. In other words,
unless the total resource of the organisation can grow, we should
not reduce down. Obviously, that is not a policy that can be written
in stone. One of the things we are looking at is how we can also
develop a stronger set of services and work in countries from
their neighbours. For example, in Africa, we are looking to work
in Rwanda out of our Uganda operation. We are developing work
in Angola from neighbouring countries and clearly in the case
of Moldova there are two options for us to look at, one of which
would be a stand-alone operation. We are very aware of the pressure—well,
not so much the pressure, but the desire of the Moldovan Government
for us to operate. We will look at whether we should open there
or, indeed, whether we should expand our work, particularly out
of Romania, into that country.
Gerard Lemos: Just one small thing
to add to that. One of the benefits of the regional approach that
we now have, about which Martin was talking earlier, is that it
makes it possible for us to extend our programmes into countries
where we do not have offices, like Moldova. That is how we started
out in Kosovo and so on. We now have a very well established and
highly successful operation in Kosovo, which I visited recently.
The way in which we put the organisation together in these regions
is a plus in this respect.
Q22 Sir John Stanley: I am
sure you are aware of the sensitivity in quite a lot of quarters
in Moldova about Romania. You might want to think quite closely
about the Ukraine if you are looking for a springboard. Can I
just ask you another couple of questions? Your regional performance
data last year covered both engagement and reach. This year they
cover only engagement and not reach. What is the reason for that?
Martin Davidson: I think we wanted
to focus ourselves and our colleagues on engagement as the most
effective measure of the power of the organisation—the impact
that the organisation achieves. We do, of course, also measure
reach and we have global measures for reach. We decided not to
publish those separately, but we can, of course, let the Committee
have them if you would be interested in them.
Sir John Stanley: We would like to have
those.[2]
Gerard Lemos: Just quickly, so
that you know now, the reach figures went up from 87 million in
2006-07 to 112 million in 2007-08 and to 221 million in 2008-09.
That is partly because of the recalibration we were discussing
earlier between reach and engagement. Although the engagement
figures went down a bit, reach figures have gone up.
Q23 Sir John Stanley: We would
like to have those regional data on reach. I just have one more
question. The engagement figures in Russia and northern Europe
fell in 2008-09. You said that they were engaging with fewer people
and that these are "champions" who "go on to achieve
great things." Would you like to give us any examples of
particular champions you have in mind?
Martin Davidson: I don't have
a specific individual in mind. In the case of northern Europe
and Russia in particular, as the Committee is aware, we have made
significant shifts in our operations and have had to re-found
them in many ways. But the sorts of programmes we are running
within the region include, for example, our international climate
champions, which is focused on a group of young people between
the ages of 16 to 20. Some of those young people have come to
the UK—for example, we brought international champions from
each of the G20 countries for the G20 summit here. We will be
taking a number of them to the Copenhagen meeting in the next
few weeks. So we are focusing on identifying young people who
want to engage in those critical areas of climate change and the
wider international agenda both in northern Europe and in Russia.
We are providing those young people with the opportunity to become
part of that wider network that we are building more generally.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q24 Mr Hamilton: Can I move
us away from Europe to the other side of the world, to China?
In 2008-09, you significantly increased investment by £2.6
million, yet engagement fell from 3.6 million to, I think, 1.3
million. You say in your report that that is because you focused
on quality rather than quantity, but can you give us some examples
of how you did this? That's a rather alarming drop, isn't it?
Martin Davidson: It is a significant
drop. In the case of China, two things are worth saying. One,
it was one of those countries where we made a decision that we
would try and meet some of the losses in the exchange rate. Other
countries had to live within the cash means; with China, we wanted
to make sure that that was not the case, so some money did go
into China to try and cover that. China is a very good example
of one of those countries where we wanted to re-base our evaluation
data. So, for example, in China, a large number of people go through
the whole education process—as you know, China is the largest
sender of students to the UK—and we were counting many in
our engagement figures of those attending education exhibitions
and other education engagements. We no longer do that, because
we don't believe that it is an appropriate way to calculate the
impact of the organisation.
Q25 Mr Hamilton: Sorry, can
I interrupt you a minute? Are you saying that you were effectively
double counting some people?
Martin Davidson: Not that we were
double counting, but that instead of counting people attending
education exhibitions and those types of activities as engagement,
we now count them as reach. We've re-categorised. Instead, we're
focusing much more on programmes like our Climate Cool programme,
which is working with the Chinese Government on developing a climate
curriculum for schools. That has involved something like 1,000
teachers and approximately 700,000 Chinese schoolchildren. We
will count the 1,000 teachers as those with whom we have a direct
engagement; the 700,000-odd schoolchildren we will count as having
been reached rather than having had direct engagement. That gives
an indication of how we're trying to focus on where we make a
direct impact on individuals, rather than a knock-on impact. It's
a very good example of how we're refocusing the programme. We're
also focusing very considerably on English language in China,
education links—higher education links in particular—and
school links. I think that gives us a very strong programme where
we will be able to demonstrate that the engagement that we have
with those people is genuinely transformational in terms of the
way they actually think about the UK and involve themselves with
the UK and, indeed, the aspirations that those young people have.
Q26 Mr Hamilton: Still on
China, these are quite large figures, even though they've reduced
significantly, for the reasons you've explained, but China is
the largest, most populous country in the world. It's really scratching
the surface, isn't it? Have you measured the proportion of people
you've engaged with, even at the 1.3 million level, compared with
other comparable countries? What percentage?
Martin Davidson: I'm not sure
that we've done a direct comparison. Different countries obviously
count these things in very different ways. We have a view in our
own minds of the sort of proportion that we should seek to engage
with, and we have established a target of 10% of a particular
cadre of people for us to have a positive engagement with. In
China, that is an astronomically large number.
Mr Hamilton: Over 100 million.
Martin Davidson: Yes. I am not
suggesting 10% of the total population; that is certainly way
beyond our capacity. But if we are looking at, for example, the
population of 16 to 20-year-olds wanting to learn English, still,
the numbers are going to be very, very large. I think it is inevitable
that if we are going to be effective in China, we have to operate
through online and electronic means. We cannot possibly have direct,
face-to-face engagement. We are, for example, discussing with
the Chinese authorities how we can work with them more closely
on English language. We are working on an online English language
offer for Chinese students. We expect to be able to announce very
soon an agreement with Nokia for English language materials over
their telephone network in China. We are working on developing
with the Chinese Government support for Chinese teachers of English,
giving them access to curriculum and teaching materials. We already
have something like 1 million Chinese teachers a year using our
services in that way.
Mr Hamilton: So we are enabling the enablers.
Martin Davidson: It is about enabling
the enablers. Indeed, exactly the same argument is made about
India, where, rather than trying to deal face to face with very
large numbers of Indian teachers, we made a decision to work with
the teacher training establishments because that gives us access
at a level that is manageable in these huge countries.
Q27 Mr Hamilton: I appreciate
that we are running a little short of time so can I whizz us through
some of the other countries? In the Middle East, grant aid increased
by about 17%, thankfully, engagement also increased by about 17%,
and satisfaction, I am glad to say, improved marginally as well.
Are these above or below the levels that you would have expected
given the increase in funding?
Martin Davidson: Perhaps I could
ask Sue to cover that as it is her region.
Sue Beaumont: I am not sure whether
they are in line with what you have just said but clearly there
was an increase in engagement, because we did more things in the
Middle East. We are doing a lot on the English language. We reached
1.4 million through an online offer by working with teachers and,
through teachers, students online. We are working with school
links across the region, and we are definitely engaging with more
young people by trying to involve them in community projects.
Often, those community projects are linked with communities in
the UK as well because it is incredibly important for both the
Middle East and the UK to have a greater understanding of each
other and there are benefits in both directions. On balance, we
have made a conscious effort to engage more people in different
areas—all marginalised areas.
Q28 Mr Hamilton: Thank you
very much for that. Last year you indicated that you expected
to increase engagement figures in central and south Asia from
just under 1 million to more than 2.5 million over the next few
years. However, as you know, engagement fell marginally by about
100,000 to 800,000. Is that exclusively because of Iran or are
there other factors and what are your revised targets?
Martin Davidson: Iran obviously
was a very substantial cause, with the closure of the office in
January, but to all intents and purposes the work had been substantially
run down by that period. It is also a rebasing of our activities
in central and south Asia, but I think that I will ask Sue to
perhaps use Pakistan as an example of where we are expecting to
go.
Sue Beaumont: In Pakistan we have
focused on fewer programmes, so, in a sense, that affects some
of the engagement figures, but as a result we are reaching far
more young people. To take people who are engaged through our
school linking programmes, we have around 200,000 school links
in Pakistan and they reach about 500,000 school children. Those
school children are very much engaged with the UK on learning
projects, which could be on anything—environmental issues,
heritage, their different cultures. There is a very strong connection
between schools in the UK engaged with schools in Pakistan, which
brings all sorts of benefits to learners. We have also worked
with teachers on teacher development in leadership and on running
schools and improving what you can get out of resources. When
teachers from the UK meet teachers in Pakistan they are usually
quite amazed at what schools in Pakistan can deliver with very
small resources. What also happens is a lot of exchange on curriculum
practice. An incredible amount of mutuality goes on. I think that
what we want to do in the future is expand that enormously because
we find that people-to-people contact, particularly for the school
children, for students and for young people, enhances the trust
and understanding between our cultures.
Q29 Mr Hamilton: Thank you
very much. I'm sorry to move us swiftly along; we want to cover
a number of areas. We spent a lot of time over the past few years
discussing Russia. We all know what has been happening there and
of the appalling problems that the British Council has faced over
the past few years. I do not want to rehearse those but could
you bring us up to date on the current situation in Russia? Is
there any prospect of a new cultural centres agreement with the
Russian authorities? If not, how do you see the work of the Council
developing in Russia at all?
Martin Davidson: As the Committee
is aware, we have had tax disputes with the Russian authorities
for a number of years. Those tax disputes have now been settled
in St. Petersburg with a final settlement of approximately £7,000
of tax payable by the British Council, which is roughly 99.5%
less than the original tax demand. We are still in the process
of going through the courts in Moscow for the tax demand there,
and we hope very much that that will be settled within this year.
That said, I think it is important to recognise that the atmosphere
for cultural relationships with Russia has changed over the past
year or 18 months. There was an extremely successful Turner exhibition,
which took place in Moscow last year. Something like 200,000 people
went through the doors on that. We also ran a drama festival,
with a number of British drama companies going to Russia. Russia
is scheduled to be the market focus of the London Book Fair in
2011. Only in the last week or so we had a very successful exchange
with the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. There are plans for a substantial
programme of cultural exchanges with Russia both this year and
next year. So I think the atmosphere is stronger. I do not have
any information at the moment about when it will be possible for
us to obtain a cultural centres agreement, which would allow us
to reopen in St. Petersburg. Obviously, we continue to express
to the Russian authorities our desire to be able to operate effectively
from St. Petersburg, but it remains part of the wider relationship
between the UK and Russia, rather than purely a cultural one.
Q30 Mr Hamilton: On 31 January
this year you suspended all operations in Iran. Are there any
prospects for the Council returning to Iran? Have you had a chance
to talk to the Iranian authorities about the way your staff have
been treated?
Martin Davidson: We obviously
made, when the operation was closed in Iran, a number of protests
at the way in which staff had been treated. I don't think you'd
be surprised that in the subsequent period the relationship has
become increasingly difficult. Wrongly, I believe, the Iranian
authorities regard the cultural relationship as part of a wider
subversive approach to Iran. It is quite clear to me that young
Iranians are looking for the opportunity to engage and to be involved
in education, the English language, and wider contact with other
parts of the world. We stand ready when it becomes possible for
us to get back to work in Iran, but I have to say I'm not sanguine
about that being very soon.
Q31 Mr Hamilton: So you've
had no indication whatever from the Iranian authorities that in
your view it would be safe to go back there.
Martin Davidson: No, and in the
present climate it's extremely unlikely that we would get those
indications.
Q32 Mr Hamilton: Which, as
you rightly say, is tragic, given the view of most Iranians that
they look towards the west and are interested in western, especially
British and American, culture.
Martin Davidson: Iran is one of
those countries with the most extraordinarily ambitious, eloquent,
clever young population, looking for and hungry for connections
with other parts of the world. I think one of the saddest things
of all is that the opportunities for them to get those links have
been closed down.
Gerard Lemos: Perhaps I could
just say one more general thing about this. One of the most striking
things in my many long years at the British Council has been the
tenacity of our staff in these kinds of situations, Iran and Russia
being two examples, although I could quote many others where there
are other kinds of difficulties—Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and
so on. One of the striking things about life at the British Council
is how quickly we do, once the mood changes, manage to reopen
and get things going again. So we are eternal optimists and we
certainly won't stand on the sidelines any longer than we need
to. I think our track record in some of the other difficult countries
rather confirms that. So we're ready to go.
Q33 Mr Hamilton: Finally,
you mentioned Zimbabwe just now, Mr Lemos. Last year, Mr Davidson,
you told us that you were not in a position to expand your operations
in Zimbabwe and you would obviously do so as soon as the political
situation improved. We are told that it is improving. You also
said that your plans included working with the diaspora communities
in the UK and South Africa and looking at ways in which they might
be encouraged to return to Zimbabwe, as well as continuing to
work with young professionals within Zimbabwe itself. Can you
tell us what progress you have made in the last 12 months in working
with the diaspora communities and with young professionals in
Zimbabwe?
Martin Davidson: First, on the
young professionals in Zimbabwe, we have made a significant inroad
there. The number of people going through our two offices in Harare
and Bulawayo has risen to 60,000 over the year. That continues
to grow this year. The sort of services that we are offering,
which are providing access to technical and management information
from outside the country, helped some of those people to make
the decision to stay in Zimbabwe, though obviously there are many
other factors involved. We are shortly moving to new offices in
Harare which will enable us to expand those services for people
in Harare. We have also been able to continue to develop our school
linking and other programmes of that kind, which give young people
and young professionals, particularly teachers, the opportunity
to have an involvement with schools outside the country. We have
also continued to support the Harare Arts Festival to bring a
stronger arts component. We are making considerable efforts to
continue to operate in Harare and in Zimbabwe more widely. My
colleagues in South Africa have also begun to make contact with
some of the diaspora communities there. I do not have details
in front of me of exactly what they have done but I can certainly
let the Committee have those.[3]
Mr Hamilton: I'd be grateful.
Martin Davidson: I am very pleased
with our commitment to Zimbabwe and the fact that we are dealing
with more people in a more effective way. Again, both the physical
and mental courage of our staff in managing in very difficult
circumstances at one point last year should also be noted.
Gerard Lemos: Just one final thing,
we do still have public access in Zimbabwe and we know that that
is enormously valued across the political spectrum in Zimbabwe.
That is something we are committed to.
Q34 Chairman: Finally, you
gave us a very helpful written submission and I should like to
quote it back at you: "The prosperity of the UK depends on
a world which is open to commerce, culture, creativity and global
participation. In this context, the work of the British Council
is `more important than ever'." Do you think that in the
current climate that view of the work of the British Council is
shared within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office but also, and
more importantly, within the Treasury as we approach another comprehensive
spending review?
Gerard Lemos: Perhaps I could
start on this. We do not underestimate the difficulties of the
current spending climate. Of course we don't. We would be naive
to do so. We have made all the efforts that we talked about before
the Committee to make sure that our organisation is fit for the
future and that we are saving money where we can and we are meeting
all the efficiency targets that the Treasury and others have set
for us. It is important to us to keep our house in good order.
On the general strategic point, the context in which the world
is operating post the recession makes it important for us to be
able to continue to do our work. It becomes more important for
the UK to experience the benefits of creativity and openness and
it becomes more important for us to do our work on skills and
so on. We see ourselves as very strategic contributors to the
UK economy and that is the case we will make. We hope that the
Treasury and FCO will see it the way we do.
Q35 Chairman: Have you given
any thought to where you might have to make cuts in particular
regions, projects or approaches, should you find that next year
or the year beyond you are presented with difficult choices?
Gerard Lemos: We don't have a
blueprint and it is not our intention to make one. One good thing
about the Council for the purposes of this conversation is that
we have other sources of income—commercial income and so
on. But the problem is where that is derived. The countries where
we want to spend our grant funds are not the countries where we
have the maximum commercial potential. So a lot of our money is
earned in Europe and east Asia and so on but we spend it in the
Middle East and central and south Asia. It would be difficult
for us to maintain our global footprint, to which we are very
committed, if there were substantial cuts. It is in the interests
of the UK as a whole that we maintain our presence. We will live
within our means and we will try to do that efficiently but we
don't want to be put in a position where we have to reduce our
activities in places where perhaps we can't do commercial things
quite so easily because the markets aren't there for them. It
would be wrong to imagine that we could simply substitute commercial
income for Treasury funds.
Chairman: Mr Davidson, Mr Lemos and Ms
Beaumont, thank you for coming today. We will keep in touch with
you, no doubt, to follow up some of the questions with requests
for the information you said you would give us. Thank you for
your time.
Gerard Lemos: Perhaps I can say
on behalf of the Council that we do welcome the opportunity to
come and see you once a year and to share what has been going
on for us. We look forward to seeing you again next year.
Chairman: I suspect next year that some
Members of the Committee will have moved on to other things.
Gerard Lemos: I dare say that
might be true on this side of the table, too.
Chairman: We certainly hope that the
next Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee will take up the relationship
with you.
Gerard Lemos: It is a very useful
encounter for us.
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