United Kingdom: Soft Power

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I reassure my noble friend that we are working with the British Council on a plan to return it to financial sustainability. We are committed to a successful British Council that is financially stable, and our funding is over £160 million in 2025-26. FCDO officials are working closely with the British Council on a financial turnaround plan to ensure that its finances are returned to a stable footing and that the council can continue delivering for the UK for years to come.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is entirely right to emphasise the importance of soft power. I just add a note of regret that Joe Nye of Harvard, who is a strong friend of this country and the inventor of much of the thinking behind the whole soft power concept, died very suddenly recently. The world needs a man like that now, and we will miss him.

The Foreign Secretary deserves some credit too, because he has brought forward the Soft Power Council, to which he kindly invited me. The only snag was that when we discussed it and an emissary came to discuss it with me, they were full of new ideas but they seemed to have overlooked one vital idea: that by far the biggest soft bed and fertilising area for soft power in this world is the enormous and growing Commonwealth. There was no mention of that in the initial Soft Power Council report. I know that the Minister thinks quite differently, so could he take a message back to his office and remind them that soft power and the Commonwealth are two massive supports for the prosperity and security of this country as well?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I am tempted to say I agree with the noble Lord, but then I am in danger of suggesting that I am not in agreement with the Foreign Secretary. Let me be very clear: we are at one, because the Commonwealth is very important. We have a new secretary-general, who is working through it, and we are giving support to her in the development of a clear strategy focusing on the best bits of it. However, as the noble Lord knows, I see the Commonwealth as more than simply an association of Governments. It is about people and how we bring them together, whether civil society, businesses or other organisations. The simple fact is that the Commonwealth adds value to business and economic development, and we are absolutely focused on delivering that in the future.