Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an important debate on a very valuable report. In plain English, the theme is about how best to develop mutually beneficial relations with other countries. Strength and commitment are essential for policy. The word power, however, as other noble Lords have mentioned, has some rather old-fashioned connotations that I am sure foreigners sometimes find off-putting. Other countries in Europe do not use this word so strongly. I declare my interests and my experiences as a scientist, an academic and a consultant in business. I worked with various UK government departments and agencies in various aspects of foreign relations.

An interesting feature of the debate this afternoon has been the classical references. It seems like one ought to add that to one’s speech. In my case, on my first day as a civil servant at the Met Office, I went to the library and found the meteorological works of Aristotle. I thought that I had better read those if I was going to be a proper civil servant, and they were quite interesting— very analytical with beautiful descriptions —but probably not a very good weather forecast.

We all agree that the UK has a very high reputation for its global contributions in many fields, as other noble Lords have commented. These have contributed greatly to the rising health, well-being, and education worldwide. In many cases, they are done in collaboration with other countries in Europe and with agencies of the United Nations. The achievements include protecting culture, which is a really critical problem at the moment, of course, in the Middle East; pure science, such as the great atom-smashing experiments in Switzerland in the space agencies; applied science, such as weather forecasting, in which the UK excels; health; and the international infrastructure which we participate in through international bodies, in shipping, aviation and space.

The big theme of this report is the importance of the networks of telecommunications and the internet and even the so-called softer ones of intellectual property. It is important to realise that none of these networks has been taken over by the private sector or by individual countries—although there has been some muttering about the internet being owned by one particular country—despite the wishes of some corporations and countries that it should all be handed over to the private sector.

The Government make use of the Civil Service to work with these international agencies. In some senses these government agencies help these international bodies to help countries to help themselves. However, more could be done to encourage and co-ordinate the UK government agencies to perform this vital international task. They were hardly mentioned either in the report or in the Government’s response. Over many years, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s United Nations department has been responsible for how UK agencies work with UN agencies. The department has now changed its name, and this morning I tried to find out if anyone on the switchboard knew what it was. I received a negative reply. Neither the Library nor the internet nor even Wikipedia knew the answer. However, I was assured late this afternoon that the name has now been changed to the international organisations department. That is a good idea and is very much consistent with the whole idea of this report.

The importance that the UK foreign service assigns to understanding technical and commercial matters in order to assist UK business is to be welcomed. That feature was strongly highlighted in both the report and the government response. However, instead of making our ambassadors become polymaths in technical matters, perhaps the alternative is not to cut some of our UK government agencies too badly, but to enable them to help the embassies. The United States often does that. US embassies have substantial technical support from their own government agencies, and those agencies support the US private sector much more extensively than we support ours.

Although the government reply to the report was interesting, it was noticeable that it did not address the points about how Parliament should receive information about these international arrangements and bodies. We in this House have had two or three debates on that point, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has previously replied to remarks I have made about it—so this is a repeat performance. However, the issue is important and has been raised again in the report.

The report recommends that UK foreign policy should not only do its own work but support small and large networks around the world. Some UN agencies are dominated by major countries, many of which are in higher latitudes. If one is a meteorologist, one knows that different things happen in the tropics and that the people who are interested in and knowledgeable about the tropics may not be very influential on some of those UN agencies. One example is a new network set up in Cambridge: the Malaysian Commonwealth Studies Centre, with support from some countries and DfID. These regional and local networks, which are touched on in the report, are important. Such networks, international and regional, are important in helping UK SMEs to work in this field. It is also important that when Ministers make announcements about UK technology—two recent examples regarding Heathrow and the Olympic Games were interesting—they refer to the government agencies that do the work and not to the private sector. I declare an interest in that respect. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, gave some good examples in which the Government are making strong announcements in the field of health.

The report did not strongly link international collaboration in UK science and technology with collaboration in policy and other academic fields. I have had several very frustrating conversations with the directors, officials and chairs of the British Council on this point—and I will return to that issue.

I should mention one feature of the lack of connection or comprehension between the science and technology fields and the political, cultural and economic fields which I observed when I was director of the Met Office and involved in science and government. I was running the Met Office and represented the UK at the United Nations, where I worked with an excellent technical person whose job was to develop international policies. As is the case with many British scientists, the person’s education in politics, history and international affairs was limited. I asked the colleague, who was working for me, how often she read a newspaper. “Once every three weeks”, she said. I began to realise then that we needed to have a wider education. I raised the question with the Civil Service College, but the situation has not changed. There is not a broad education for technical civil servants in this country, and the number of civil servants with such an education is declining.

I return to the issue of the British Council. I have been on many British Council visits and lectures and found them valuable. However, the council is totally uncomprehending of the fact that although it pays for scientists and engineers to come to the UK, they are real people who will go back to their countries and probably rule those countries—they certainly do in China. It is really important that when these people come to the UK, the council pays for their tea and biscuits on the train journeys to bring them to London to attend our cultural events. Many visiting scientists come to the UK, go to the lab, spend three years there and then go home again. I have found it impossible to penetrate this blockage. However, some visitors—those on the Chevening scholarships—are specialists in economics, politics and so on, and they get the full works. It is important to understand that the technical and scientific people who come to this country will be very important in their countries and they need to receive the best possible welcome, understanding and education.