Thomas Raines
Alright, good evening, everybody. My name’s Tom Raines. I’m the Head of the Europe Programme here at Chatham House. Thank you all very much for joining us this evening for this discussion about Britain’s soft power, our place in the world after Brexit. This is, in fact, my first event at Chatham House after Brexit has happened, and with our exciting new backdrop, which is not related to Brexit in any way, but just to our Centenary year. Chatham House is 100 years old this year, so this is a special year for us, and I think an important time for us to be talking about Britain’s role in the world, which was key to our founding 100 years ago.
This event is on the record, it’s not under the Chatham House Rule, and it’s also livestreamed. So, I would appreciate if you could keep your phones on silent, you don’t need to turn them off, and you can tweet about the event. There’s a hashtag on the side, which should be CHEvents.
I’m delighted this evening for this discussion that Penny Mordaunt has come to join us. Penny was – has been the Conservative MP for Portsmouth North since 2010. She’s had several different roles in government and in the cabinet. She was Secretary of State for International Development from 2017 to 2019 and Secretary of State for Defence in 2019, and since then, has been writing a book and getting re-elected to her seat in the new Parliament. And we’ve got about – we’re going to talk, I think, for about half an hour or so about some of the issues we’d like to discuss around Britain’s position in the world, and then we’ll open up to questions from everybody. So, Penny, thank you so much for joining us this evening. I think it’s a, sort of, obvious place to start with Brexit and with Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, and you were a supporter of that decision and campaigned for the Leave vote. How do you think that decision to leave the EU and the fact that that process has now been, at least in its first phase, withdrawal has happened, it’s, sort of, an irreversible process, in the short-term at least, how do you think that has affected Britain’s reputation internationally? Do you think – how do you – has it affected perceptions of Britain around the world?
Penny Mordaunt MP
Well, I think different people will think different things. I think how we view it as a nation is important, though, because I think that affects our ambition, it affects our confidence, and I think one of the lessons of Brexit is that if change isn’t a process, it becomes an event, and we should start to think also about what reforms we need to do at home and how we need to get our politics, but also, our structures in Whitehall and across the country at local government level to really deliver for people. Because what we know is that people are quite understandably becoming very frustrated with politics and Politicians, and if we don’t sort our own house out now, we are – the same fate awaits us, I fear, in Westminster and Whitehall. So, I think that’s what we need to take away from this whole episode, but I personally, and I’ve said this throughout the last few years, painful as they’ve been, that I do genuinely think that although it has been – we’ve been through the mill as a nation, that we will look back at this moment with immense pride, and it is because we have tested our democratic institutions to the hilt. We have really put them through their paces and what we’ve seen is the executive, we’ve seen the courts, we’ve seen Parliament crunching down to a result. It took a leadership contest, it’s taken, ultimately, a couple of general elections, but we have got there in the end, and other nations, I think, would have given up. They…
Thomas Raines
Plenty of people thought of giving up halfway through here.
Penny Mordaunt MP
Indeed, but we didn’t. We didn’t and I was very struck that – and I, you know, said this in Parliament, that the greatest act of patriotism was not people like me who voted to Leave, it was people that voted Remain and accepted the democratic results, and I think that that’s actually a source of huge pride. I think we should be really proud of that. I don’t see us as a divided nation, I see us as a nation where we have discussion, we have debate, we have division, in the sense of we value plurality of thought, but ultimately, we are a democratic nation, and I – and we feel that very strongly and we have great, strong institutions. I will take that over nations where there’s no dissent or division or democracy, and I think that is something that we should all be genuinely very proud of, but we can’t expect other people to be confident in – about us, unless we’re confident about ourselves. So, what we need to do now is to make a success of what we’ve done, and we’ve got to, obviously, a huge amount of work on the international front, on trade, but we’ve also got to make sure we deliver on the domestic priorities as well.
Thomas Raines
And just on this – just ‘cause I think a running theme in this conversation will be a connection between the, sort of, domestic aspects of our politics and our international ambitions. I’m just interested in this question around democracy, because I think that’s historically been a key component of Britain’s soft power, the Westminster institutions, the Westminster model of democracy. It’s certainly true that it reached a resolution in the end, but it was very severely tested, in some ways, I think. I suppose there are two different ways of looking at it. One was that it was a, sort of, an endorsement, in a way, that the system checked itself, it self-regulated and it got to a point where it delivered an outcome. But I think it also was pretty chaotic, pretty painful and it involved, you know, things like the proro – you know, the prorogation of Parliament, etc., which, in some ways, depending on your point of view, but certainly to the perception of many ran counter to that, sort of, democratic tradition. So, I guess, do you think that our democracy to retain, sort of, democracy as an element of our soft power, that those institutions need reform, need revival, need change, or do we come out of this as a, sort of, an endorsement of a Westminster system, which got to an outcome in the end?
Penny Mordaunt MP
So, only history is neat and tidy. People look back on this and think it was a foregone conclusion that it all worked out the way it did, but that is not life, and when you’re living through these events, it’s messy. I think it is a – I – there’s been, obviously, lots of discussion around, “Do you want to make political appointments? Does the Supreme Court need changing?” I think, actually, those institutions proved that they’re strong, and the system as a whole, as you say, checked itself, it worked through things. I don’t think democracy is damaged by either a Prime Minister proroguing Parliament and a court telling him that he hasn’t. It was in jeopardy if we didn’t honour the result of a referendum, and we did.
Thomas Raines
Now we’re outside the EU, what do we need to do differently as a country to sustain our influence or grow our influence internationally if they’re – if we’re to thrive?
Penny Mordaunt MP
Well, obviously, there is going to be lots of focus on doing those trade deals, and that is going to be a major part of what government needs to focus on and making a success of that. I do think, though, that we have to reflect on the things that haven’t worked: our capacity in Whitehall, and I don’t just mean about the structures of departments and those sorts of things. I mean our ability to actually move at a pace that business and science need us to move at, and really being aware of just what it is going to take for us to deliver on particular things, whether they’re on our domestic priorities or whether they’re internationally. I have obviously, been a champion for, not on the international front, on us being able to use the budgets that we have at our disposal in Whitehall in a much smarter way, much more partnership work with our great institutions, and then domestically, really focusing in on each of the sectors.
So, I’ve long thought, you know, if we had a better way of working in the public sector with the private and with the third sector, we would really create a Jupiter’s sling effect that could actually deliver the resource we need to do some of the things on our wish list. So – and Parliament and Whitehall really are not where they need to be. Those are the things that I would focus on, but it’s not about tinkering with the constitution, it’s really about a whole variety of things, training, also what we teach in our business schools as well. Just the volume of – ‘cause it’s not just political leadership that’s in trouble, it’s leadership everywhere that’s in trouble. We’ve got to look at what we’re teaching in our business schools. Ethics, there’s huge ethical lapse across every sector from our leaders, and we’ve got to really make sure that we can – we’re not limiting our ambitions by what’s in the Treasury coffers, because that is not sufficient. We’ve got to find ways of creating national missions that we can all get behind, and getting a bit of confidence back, too.
Thomas Raines
I guess we wanted to focus this evening’s conversation – I’m sure it will be, kind of, broad ranging, but on soft power, which is, you know, a term which emerged in the international relations literature and I think has been, sort of, used to mean slightly different things to different people. What do you think of as Britain’s soft power, and what are the elements of it?
Penny Mordaunt MP
Well, I was very stuck, when I was at DFID, at just how much we had to offer as part of the work we were doing there, and it ranges from our, well, the City of London and our financial services sector, through to our creative law, through to our incredible science base. It’s everything that we do. We really do have just incredible opportunities to support both democracy, but also the good stewardship of capital, which I think are the things that we – that our – that make up our global mission, that is what we should be doing as a country. And also, I mean, not just these institutions, but also, the Great British public as well. The number of people that volunteer, the number of people who are involved in international organisations and charities, who are contributing to things, whilst sat on their allotment, they’re helping tackle…
Thomas Raines
Is that a Corbyn reference?
Penny Mordaunt MP
Well, it could well be. I don’t think he’s necessarily involved in some of these schemes, but I would encourage him, but, you know, helping African farmers increase their yields. I mean, it’s amazing what we do as a country. We don’t talk about that enough, and one of the things that has really struck me over the last few years, I’ve interviewed a lot of people and asked them what they think about Britain, what’s good about what we do, what’s not good, and they’re – that amongst ourselves, our stock is not very high, but people have great regard for our capacity and what we do, and we also feel this, I think, it’s, sort of, hardwired into us that we should be doing these things. People get annoyed when they see situations going on in the world. They want to – they want us to get involved, they want us to go and help, and that has run counter to, you know, the feeling that we can’t trust Politicians to deploy our troops, and we shouldn’t be spending the aid budget in the way that we do. Despite all of that, the British public still feel that very strongly. They want to go and help, and you see that in what they do personally with their money and their time, but also, you know, my mail bag as a Politician.
Thomas Raines
There’s also, probably, though, some countervailing currents in public opinion, which see, you know, the last 20 years of military interventions, for example, or, you know, to take DFID as an example, it’s, you know, not always the most popular aspect of government expenditure, I think it would be fair to say, and, you know, receives plenty of, sort of, tabloid criticism, etc. So, how do you build a public that supports a, sort of, mission-based foreign policy that you’re describing?
Penny Mordaunt MP
So, I think the public are way ahead of us. I think the public do support that. I, you know, I evidence that by – because I’m a Politician I talk to a lot of people, but also what they do, how they spend their own money, and the fact that in six weeks this nation raised, in voluntary donations, 30 million to support the Rohingya fleeing terror in Myanmar, and many other examples of that, and they want us to do that, they have a feeling that we are not an ordinary nation. They want us to be able to positively affect the world around us. They want us to go and rescue people, they want us to go and sort things out. They get very proud when they see our flag flying or the British Red Cross up to something and going and do something, or our search and rescue teams. Those are the things that they feel very keenly, and they also know that we, you know, we have great professions that can do a lot of good things as well. So, that’s evidenced in what they do. The problem is, they haven’t trusted us to spend their money via their taxes in a way that they approve of, and part of my role at DFID was to try and correct that, but the – it’s not that they are sceptical about spending money on helping people round the world. They understand very well the connection between our own health and security at home and what happens round the world. They just have not trusted us to do it, and that’s where we need to start, and that’s why we’ve got some opportunities now, especially when people are really focused on these issues and getting Whitehall where it needs to be, that we can hopefully deliver for them.
Thomas Raines
So, granted, there’s a, sort of, humanitarian instinct, which you’ve identified and, sort of, the charitable role that so much of civil society plays, but how does that connect to these ideas around democracy and – in particular, and I suppose I’m interested if you feel that part of what the, kind of, purpose of UK foreign policy should be is to support democracy elsewhere, and is that your view? And have we been any good at that in the past?
Penny Mordaunt MP
Well, I think we – But I mean, the world is getting a better place. We don’t feel this when we look at our Twitter feeds, but it is. The number of democracies has grown immensely. It’s getting – people are getting healthier and wealthier, and we’ve had a big part to play in that. I mean, DFID is a development superpower. It does great things, its reputation around the world is high, but it is just a fraction of what the country does, and there are amazing organisations out there doing incredible things. I think we need to recognise that as well as the charitable aspects and people running education programmes or vaccination programmes or all of those things, it’s also about civil society as well. I, you know, really learnt that when I was Secretary of State, that having a free press, civil society space is shrinking, it’s a problem, protecting that. We do a lot to protect that. I think that we could – there are some things that we could do, which would help us do that better, really identifying who are the human rights defenders we want to be able to protect, devising ways that we can quickly give them sanctuary. Those sorts of things I think we could do more on, but we’ve done a huge amount, and when you ask people outside this country what we’ve done, they have a clearer view of that than perhaps what we do at home. So, we shouldn’t be shy about saying it.
Thomas Raines
That’s interesting, and do you think given we’ve had a decision last week which, sort of, showed some of the pressures the UK might face in some of these international relations, in terms of the Huawei decision, and that was, sort of, a balancing act, really, between the US and China, do you think that the UK might end up paying a political cost in other areas for having that sort of foreign policy that’s quite ethically driven? You know, I’m thinking, for example, you know, in a world with some quite difficult political choices for the UK, are we in a position to, sort of, be – to play that role, you know, for press freedom advocates in China, for example, or we haven’t been terribly vocal on Hong Kong, for example? Are we willing to pay the political costs that it takes to show that sort of leadership?
Penny Mordaunt MP
Well, I think we should. I think we – the world is a complicated place and we’re going to always be under pressures, and short-term pressures, but that – a fine balancing act between particular nations, but if we don’t have a good, clear idea about what we’re here to do, what’s in our own interests, and I don’t mean short-term interests but long-term interests, we will get lost. And I think that we need to really – I always think that the Foreign Office hasn’t really found its feet and hasn’t really got the strategy that it needs, it hasn’t – in Whitehall it hasn’t really settled down and figured out what its role is, compared to the national security apparatus in Whitehall, and I think it’s that – it’s those meta – the meta-strategy that sits behind, “We’re going to do this with China,” or, “We’re going to make sure that these two countries don’t, you know, get allied,” or, “We want to see progress on civil society.” That’s not the strategy that we need, level that we really need the focus on at the moment, and we do now have an opportunity to reset things. And that is going to take some changes in Whitehall, but it’s also going to take us having a long, hard think about what it is we’re here to do.
Thomas Raines
Certainly, there are some people in Number 10 who seem quite determined to shake up the way that Whitehall operates, and you’ve worked in a number of different government departments. What do you think of the discussion about the position of DFID within Whitehall? Is it your view that it should remain an independent department, so in Secretary of State, and operate, kind of, you know, collaboratively but ultimately independently from the Foreign Office, or, you know, there is this – historically, it’s often – it’s, sort of, gone in and out of the Foreign Office’s remit. What would be your view on how to, sort of, align foreign and development policy?
Penny Mordaunt MP
So, if – Whitehall needs a shake up, but if we start by talking to Whitehall about Whitehall, we won’t get the right result. What Whitehall has been bad at is really having good two-way communications with the other sectors, with business, but also with social enterprise and the charitable sector. It’s had – it’s been good at some points, it’s been bad, but it’s been pretty awful over the last few years, and that’s what we need to start doing more of. We need to start really listening to what those opportunities are and thinking then about how we can amplify what others are able to do.
I remember at DFID we had someone come in with a multi-billion pound offer to transform surgery around the world, and we really struggled as a department to figure out what our role was in enabling that to really fly. Sometimes it – one of the problems that DFID had, and it was a nice problem to have, but if you’re focused on getting 14 billion out the door, there’s not a lot of scope to help someone with another five billion do other things. So, the – you know, if we limit ourselves by what’s in our own coffers, by what the Treasury has, the capability in Whitehall, we are never going to deliver what we need to do. So, we really need to start looking at the other sectors.
In terms of DFID as a standalone department, there are two things about DFID which are worth remembering. First of all, it’s an operational department. It does things like defence, and it should take its strategic lead from the Foreign Office. When I was Secretary of State, I made a point of taking every week my ministerial team over to the Foreign Office for Foreign Office prayers, because that was, to me, where the strategic direction should come from, and we want…
Thomas Raines
Prayers here means a, sort of, forward meeting, right, yeah.
Penny Mordaunt MP
It’s a weekly meeting. Yeah, it’s a sort of weekly meeting, where people chat about what’s going on in the world and figure out what we should do about it. So, that is important. DFID also, unlike other departments – normally other departments have a, sort of, hierarchy. DFID isn’t like that, it has a hierarchy, but it has an inverted hierarchy as well, because it has a – about a quarter of the people who are involved in it are external academic experts in one field or another. And so you have policy pushed up, but then it hits this cadre of policy experts and that’s how you – you know, DFID ensures it’s doing quality work. As a consequence, and I’ve been in a few departments, internationally facing and domestic facing, it’s one of them – it’s one of the most outward facing departments. It’s actually anchored in the expertise that’s out there and people that are doing very, very practical things and grappling with all sorts of issues, and that’s a big asset. Just by moving people into another building, you’re not going to gain anything.
What I think we need to do is, again, the Foreign Office really needs to look at what it’s there to do in the long-term. We need to look at the things that are missing in Whitehall that cause us to make bad decisions and that cause us not to think about the things we should be thinking about. I’ll just give you one example. We have a lot of intelligence products in – produced by all kinds of departments, for all sorts of reasons. In Whitehall, we’re really bad at looking at things that will help us understand what’s happening in the world with finance, business, mergers and acquisitions, all of those things, but actually, that’s probably one of the most important things to understand, when you’re taking security decisions, but it’s not a product that’s produced.
Liam did some good work when he was at Trade. There’s some fantastic work looking at trends that’s produced in Defence, but the Concept and Doctrine Centre was moved out to Shrivenham, and one of the things that I’m very keen on is, as a Minister, you want really good situational awareness, but you don’t have the product to really do that without an awful lot of legwork on your part. So, that’s a very small example. I’ve bored everyone to tears about how you use ODA money better, even within the rules that we – the international rules, Treasury constrains, how can use it, and that makes it very ineffective. You could do so much more if you took a more sensible approach to that. I’ve got lots of examples about how to do that, but those are the very tactical things, but it’s the strategy that we’ve got to crack.
Thomas Raines
Okay and in terms of, you know, making Whitehall work better or having a more coherent government approach, one of my frustrations, I think, in looking at aspects of the UK’s, sort of, international ambitions is that sometimes they jar against what we are doing domestically. So, we have a government which, in the past, has had a very big narrative of an open, global Britain, and at the same time, in some areas around, for example, visa policy, that’s been very restrictive. We even find, at Chatham House, it is – it’s difficult to get, you know, people to come to events, business leaders to get visas to come and speak here at forums that we have, for example. So, there are elements of domestic policy which, actually, kind of, actively undermine what we’re trying to do internationally.
Another example, we had a – you know, when the UK hosted the G8 Summit, there was a big push on, sort of, tax transparency and loss taxation, and the UK is yet to really seriously get to grips with the role of our own overseas territories in that issue. So, I just wonder, do you think is that just inevitable, the poli – the, sort of, natural product of competing politics? You know, we’ve got domestic politics and international ambitions, and domestic politics is just going to win, or is there a way that the UK can have – you know, if we want to have, you know, ambitious trade deals that might involve, you know, greater openness on visa policies if we want to have services, etc. Are we willing to make those trade-offs?
Penny Mordaunt MP
So, now there is no excuse for not thinking about these things. I think part of the – part of it wasn’t, you know, physical obstacle, but because certain things that you did were constrained in a particular way because of our membership with – of the EU, people haven’t thought these things through. It was only, actually, until, you know, the last few years that DWP was much more focused on actually, the – what workforce we needed, looking across each sector, where were the skills gaps? We’ve never been very good at training up the people we need in healthcare or engineering or those sorts of things. So, we’ve been not great as a nation for doing that, but now there is no excuse for not doing that, and as we have approached the moment of Brexit, there has been work going on in departments to really do that legwork to make good decisions.
I think if you have the objectives of supporting democracy and the good stewardship of capital and retaining people’s trust, in both those things, you really do have to get a grip on some of the issues around taxation. You – and we are well placed to do that as a nation. People trust us. We have great expertise in that field. So, it’s obviously very difficult, politically, in some areas, but I think we need to pursue that. We do. It’s something we can do to help, and I also think that, again, if we’ve done – if we’ve got a clear view about what the nation needs and there’s a clear understanding, ‘cause the purpose of national missions is not just to figure out in Whitehall what you need to do and put it in a drawer, it’s to say to everyone that you want to contribute what we’re up to. And I really do think, you know, when people enjoy a movie or hark back to a particular time in our history, it’s when people have really understood how they can contribute. People are frustrated about politics not because they think all Politicians are dreadful, although, actually, that is a widely held view, it is that they have answers and they want to help and they can’t and we don’t let them. So, that’s what we need to focus on.
Thomas Raines
Can I ask you just on migration policy specifically? ‘Cause, you know, on this theme of soft power I think that’s been one of the challenges to the UK’s reputation, over the last few years, partly based on, you know, things like the hostile environment policy and the perception that we’ve been very hard-line on migration policy, but also, the role that immigration and perceptions of immigration policy played in the referendum debate. Obviously, we will end freedom of movement now, there will be a new UK migration policy. So, I suppose, do you accept that our, kind of, national debate about immigration has affected our soft power, and what can we do with migration policy in the future to address those issues?
Penny Mordaunt MP
Well, I think we – again, different people will have different perceptions, based on – in part, on their own interests in what we’re doing. I think we have got to work hard at this, and it’s been a narrative throughout the whole of the last few years, that we are going global, and we have to articulate what that actually means. I…
Thomas Raines
We also have to mean it.
Penny Mordaunt MP
Absolutely, we do, and you’re absolutely right, it’s been ridiculous, in terms of, you know, barriers to Scientists, to all sorts of people that we want to be able to come and collaborate. I’ve had difficulty getting people for government meetings, and so forth. It’s – our visa system, it’s not just about the policy, it’s actually about how fast it is, how competent it is, all of those things that we have to improve on. I do think, though, we have, on other areas and including the work that we’ve done, obviously, big issue in the news about refugees, that we have had the right policies in place, but again, if we could use our resources better we would have a better story to tell on those fronts. I’ll just give you one example. When I was trying to reform the DAC Committee rules, the international rules about how you can spend ODA, I – rather than spend years arguing the case for a minor rule change, and I think the reverse graduation changes we got so that we could help Caribbean islands flattened by hurricanes took three years at least to deliver, not fast enough.
I floated the idea that we could approach the committee just with a concept that we thought would do good in the world and see whether we could get these changes to happen faster. And part of the problem with taking, as we wanted to, high needs individuals out of refugee camps and use our expertise and resources to help those individuals, was that the burden on local authorities was enormous. And as a consequence, you didn’t get everyone running to do this, you had several places that did a huge amount and others that did nothing at all. But if we could use ODA money for capital costs for those individuals, not to spend on anything else, but for those individuals, you would then open up all kinds of possibilities for our own charities and domestic facing charities, places like Mencap and Scope. So, could we not have used some of that money to actually create some amazing facilities for high need refugees and their families, but also, used with other pots of money, for British children with disabilities? Couldn’t we have funded healthcare professionals to support both those families? What an amazing story that would tell for our sanctuary cities. So, again, sensible things that would enable us to do more and that we would want to do that for those individuals, but also, enable us to cover off some of those domestic priorities, which currently we’re nowhere near delivering on as well. So, there’s just smarter ways of doing this.
Thomas Raines
Okay, I think we should open it out to the audience, and lots of interesting topics that we haven’t got into yet. So, I’m going to take some questions now. If you could just introduce yourself at the beginning, so we know who’s asking the question. Try and keep your question reasonably targeted and short. Much as we enjoy speeches at Chatham House, we prefer questions at this point, and I will try and get a mix from around the room. So, yeah, there’s a gentleman at the back here. Yeah, right on the back row. Thank you.
Alasdair Donaldson
Thank you. Alasdair Donaldson, British Council. Thank you for that talk, it was really interesting. The UK clearly remains a soft power, a leading soft power in the world, but we’re finding increasing competition from places like China and Russia, pumping in huge resources into their soft power, and also, friendly – friends and neighbours like France, who are much more strategic in the deployment of their soft power assets. Do you think that the UK should co-ordinate its soft power potential more, and if so, how?
Thomas Raines
Interesting.
Penny Mordaunt MP
Are you taking those?
Thomas Raines
Let’s just go one at a time for now and then we’ll group them.
Penny Mordaunt MP
Okay. So, I think that it’s interesting you focus on, sort of, the infrastructure side of things with China. Obviously, they have a particular vision and agenda. I think a lot of nations are getting wise to some of the things that are coming along with that. That’s – that was very clear to me that people feel that if they can, they should resist some of the offers that are made, but obviously, it’s a difficult position that individual Politicians are put in.
My argument with what China was doing, and I think we have had some successes in changing how – some of the behaviour that China was exhibiting. So, when I was at DFID, I – the World Bank came under my remit, and we had some success with diluting our shareholding to – at letting China actually take some of that and move from being a recipient to a donor nation at the World Bank. Alongside that, I was very vocal in encouraging them because of the Belt and Road Initiative that they ought to, it was in their interest, to invest more in both humanitarian, but also global health security, and they had an interest in that. We worked with them, not in my time, but on Ebola in Africa, in 2013, but they’d also – they’ve got particular research centres that would indicate this is an area of interest, and if their ambitions with the Belt and Road are there, then they should be focused on that. So, I think that we can try and change some of that behaviour by incentivising, by arguing, by co-funding and doing those things, but I think, you know, nations are becoming wise to some of the other things that come along with what they’re doing.
France was always incredibly impressive when I was at DFID. I would go to many conferences, and we were paying enormous sums, and there was no – none of our flags up, and France would just – Tricolours everywhere, and, you know, they’d just pay for the tea. So, they’re very good at – they get a very good soft power return on what they do, and they are very strategic as well about where they’re going to operate, but I think we do things that they can’t. We are a nation that provides a bridge between nations that might not otherwise be able to have a dialogue or have a partnership. That’s one of the things that I think we really do bring to the table. We can go and broker deals, we can go and do some of the tough stuff that I think other nations can’t, and I think that that is a very great thing. There are many things we need to do to ensure that we have the skills to do that, and I also think if we can create these national missions and we have a – we can articulate them in a way that lots of people understand, we will increase what we have to – in our soft power offer, if you like.
I also think we should look at where the opportunities are, over the next few years. I mean, everybody has been talking about the BBC, and normally, when the BBC talks about soft power, it wants some more money for particular stations or particular programming. But we ought to be thinking about this in a much broader way, about English language teaching. You know, we have a huge shortage across the world. I think last count was about 60 million Teachers short of reaching the Global Goal 4. What other things can we do with what we’ve got that are going to make a difference to those things?
Thomas Raines
Can I just ask, ‘cause you raised the BBC, what happens when there’s basically, a clash or a fight between some of the institutions, which represent British soft power and the government, which is supposed to be building upon them? ‘Cause we’ve had that in the past with universities, we’ve had that in the past now with – or many stages with the BBC, but there’s clearly, you know, there’s a view that the BBC is, sort of, one of the crown jewels of, you know, the British brand, if we want to call it that, or the UK’s soft power. At the same time there’s, you know, a lot of disagreement about the BBC’s future, its role, how it’s funded, it’s a public service mission, its neutrality, how it’s governed. So, how does the government, sort of, succeed in, you know, building on Britain’s soft power. if it’s coming into conflict with some of the elements of it?
Penny Mordaunt MP
Well, I think there’s two things. There’s, first of all, what do you want the BBC to do, and that’s – quite often that conversation immediately runs to editorial decisions on the 6 O’clock News. That’s obviously not where we should be at all, but we should, I think, have a view if there is going to be some element of public funding, and I think there will be for a long time in the future, we should have a view and clearly state what we need the organisation to do. And that’s not just about archiving music, it is about soft power, it’s about promoting English, it’s a whole raft of things. Back home, I would also suggest it’s about the union of the United Kingdom. I would be bringing back the UK theme on Radio 4. That was debated before I got into Parliament, but I think those are the sorts of things that are celebrating and strengthening our culture and the regions and nations of the UK. I think those are the sorts of things that we should be having a clear view about as, well, government, but it’s also, you know, we’re reflecting the people’s views. But I also think the other stumbling block to this and why it’s so difficult and no-one has really, kind of, been able to grip it is that we know the funding model has to change, but it’s a chicken-and-egg situation. If you allow the BBC to forge ahead with the commercial opportunities that it’s got, it then gets restricted because it falls foul of, you know, competition issues and – so – but – so, you have to find a way of sequencing this.
One of the great British characteristics is that we are – we want change, we want progress and we’re ambitious, but we just take it at a steady pace, and I think we don’t want a situation where we’re turning off public funding for an organisation that hasn’t got a glide path to ramping up its commercial activities. It’s that detail that needs to be worked out and hasn’t been today.
Thomas Raines
Okay, let’s take another question. There’s a gentleman here at the front.
Lou Wrightman
Good evening, Lou Wrightman from Business Intelligence at Kroll. I was really interested in what you were saying about lacking, of business expertise in Whitehall, and there’s certainly that’s something that you can hear from people at the UN or the EU as well. Are there any concrete ideas, any concrete things that you can think of that could be done to change that?
Thomas Raines
So, how do we get more business expertise into Whitehall?
Penny Mordaunt MP
So, I recently, as part of the preparation for the book that I’ve been doing, I did a – done a session with…
Thomas Raines
‘Cause you’ve been very restrained in mentioning it.
Penny Mordaunt MP
I know, I know, I know, but I’m not going to utter a word tonight, but I’ve done a lot of work with organisations, asking them that specific question, and what can business learn from government and what government can learn from business, and I did a session recently with the CBI on this. I think that we need to be, first of all, helping our Civil Servants, who – the – we always have an image of Sir Humphrey. There are – there’s a whole variety of different individuals involved in the Civil Service, but we – I think that we are missing a trick in actually how we prepare them. Not just experience of business, but in particular, social enterprise, which I think if we’re going to deliver both internationally and domestically, we need to have a huge revolution and really start to enable more of these enterprises to deliver, because it – they are so much better at doing that. We need to help our Civil Servants get educated, and part of that is also about them not being hoovered into Whitehall. It’s about enabling them to stay in the regions and do some very, very practical things.
One of the people who I really admire and I’ve learnt so much from, in terms of getting things done, is Andrew Mawson, Lord Mawson, who is a very, very practical person, and he doesn’t write strategies, he gets communities together and he actually starts, just starts to do things. And that is actually how business operates, in comparison, if I’m being rather unfair, to Whitehall, which is about having a strategy, testing it and not starting and not connecting people up. I also think we need to spend a – more – have more focus on proper government to business communications. We’re really bad at this, and under Boris, he actually has put some greater resource into that. I’ll just give you one example from when I held the equalities brief. I just did a survey of how many different schemes the government had on equalities issues, aimed at the same poor HR Director. There were about 48 schemes, which had no reference to each other at all, on gender pay gap, ethnic pay gap, Disability Confident, see positive, all of these different schemes. So, we’ve got to try and look at it from that point of view.
I think ultimately, as well, we need to let go of some things, and I think there’s an opportunity there in the levelling up agenda to do that.
Thomas Raines
Okay, there’s a woman just here, just in the third row.
Mohamed Amersi
Hello, Mohamed Amersi, Chatham House Member. The question I have is, is there such a thing as soft power being effective today? Because when you look at Russia, United States, China, India, they all exercise hard power to get to where they want to get. If you look at the United Nations Security Council, again, it’s hard power. The times when you had diplomacy and you had state craft, and there is hardly any of that left today, doesn’t seem to be effective at all. So, don’t you think we should really be looking at how we can exercise hard power and be respected, because soft power doesn’t seem to get you respect anymore?
Thomas Raines
Hold that thought one second, I’m going to take a couple together. There’s a woman – there’s one in the second row in a red jersey, and then one just behind, as well.
Helen Alderson
Thank you, Helen Alderson from the International Committee of the Red Cross, hello. Just, yeah, you voiced certain frustrations around the difficulty of Whitehall to get other sectors involved, and so I’d just be interested in your thoughts as to now with a new political make up and looking forward whether this is – you feel that possibly this is a real moment to break down silos, and that can happen now? And a, sort of, specific example is the integrated security defence and foreign policy review that’s happening in quite a short period of time, in fact, and maybe there are novel ways to bring in other soft power providers into that, and just to have your thoughts on that. Thanks very much.
Thomas Raines
That’s great, and just behind you there. Yeah, thank you.
Deborah Haynes
Hi, I’m Deborah Haynes from Sky News. You had some quite critical words for the Foreign Office. What do you think they should be doing? What should their strategy be? And, obviously, it’s got quite a relatively small budget, compared to its big job. Would you like to see that changed and increased? Thanks.
Thomas Raines
Good question. So, you – one question on hard power and the relationship between hard power and soft power. As a former Secretary of State for Defence, you can give your views on the importance of hard power, a question about integrating the STSR and bringing people out of their silos, working together, and a question about the role of Foreign Office.
Penny Mordaunt MP
Yes, so, I am obviously a card-carrying fan of hard power. I’m very pro this. I would like us to have some more ships, and all sorts of things, but actually, and I’ve always felt we need to keep, as you know, defence spending strong. I think if we’re smarter about how we organise ourselves in Whitehall, we would have more flexibility and capability at that end of the spectrum. But if we are focused on that we’re not going to be doing much, and this is because – I don’t know whether any of – anyone’s heard of the Tarrant curve? Have you heard of this? This is named after a Naval Officer, who was a Submariner, who looked at – he did a study of what is the best return on investment for a nation, and the Tarrant curve is the curve of your expenditure at – across the whole spectrum of your – of hard and soft power. So, your influence and diplomacy, your capacity building, your development work, through to your deterrents and then intervention, and if you’re at the intervention level, your return on investment is surprisingly not great. So, it makes much more sense to do things early, and that is why soft power is so important, that is why it is what we should be focused on, and why actually – and, you know, General Mattis said this, you know, “If you cut the aid budget in the US, you better give me some more bombs,” because you can obviously deal with a lot of things at that end, and why actually, I supported our carriers coming back online, because, actually, carriers are an incredibly powerful deterrent, and you don’t have to then go and spend the major bucks on what might otherwise happen.
So, we should be doing that. I think that, coming to your point off the back of that, the Foreign Office doesn’t just have its budget, and it doesn’t just have DFID’s budget, and it doesn’t just have defence. It has everything that the nation has to offer, and this is the real problem with Whitehall. It has a problem that it’s trying to solve and it looks at what it’s got in its budget, if it’s lucky, for the next couple of years, but it’s been looking at, sort of, you know, shorter-term than that, and then it figures out what it can do. It doesn’t think, “What is this going to take?” and then work out how to do it. And if we limit ourselves just by what’s in the Treasury coffers, what our Civil Servants will do is they’ll do roundtables, they’ll do, you know, a programme that’s a grant scheme for something or the other, and it won’t actually have the impact.
If we don’t start talking about things, in terms of national missions, if we don’t start talking about things, in terms that the public can understand and business can understand, we will not lever in everything our nation has to offer. That’s where we need to get to. That’s what the Foreign Office needs to do. I don’t really care what the budget levels in each department look like. What I care about is what are we here to do, and for us to be ambitious, ‘cause I can – I really can tell you, the public are really ambitious, and they want us to be effective. They want us to be effective, in terms of our hard power, and they want us also, and they really do appreciate what good soft power looks like.
Thomas Raines
So, you think that the – I have to declare an interest as a former employee of the Foreign Office here, but you think that the funding that the Foreign Office has isn’t really what its major challenge is? You mentioned earlier that it’s, sort of, struggled to define its position, what its, kind of, distinctive contribution is in the – in foreign policymaking, sort of, post various reforms to how Whitehall operates. ‘Cause my sympathy is slightly with the FCO in the sense that it basically has an operating budget about the size of Sheffield Council, with which to deliver the global Britain vision, and obviously, it’s drawing on lots else to do that. But it does feel as though that is a bit of government, which has been, sort of, allowed to atrophy, to some degree, over the last two decades.
Penny Mordaunt MP
So, let me put it this way, and I – when I speak to a Whitehall audience, and as, obviously, as – in Secretary of States posts I did this quite a lot, and if you go to another country and you see the Foreign Office, DFID, defence, trade, bays and other teams, they’re working as one, and they share information, they understand what they’re trying to get done. What good in Whitehall looks like is that, and it doesn’t really matter who is paying for the headcount. You’re all pulling together, and so what, of course, everyone gets very excited about is, you know, who’s in what building and all of that. I also think this comes back to who our Ambassadors are, having much more flexibility about people being able to move from one particular task and post to another. I also think we don’t make good use of our alumni, either. I mean, I – this frustration in defence, where we invest incredibly in all these individuals to produce one First Sea Lord or one Chief of General Staff or CDS, and then everyone else goes off and does something. Yes, they’re still contributing, but how we could potentially use those individuals in particular parts of the world – I was very keen, when I was at Defence, that we actually – we got some people back and doing broader diplomatic work. We’ve got these incredible resources that we just don’t utilise. So, we’ve just got to get this to work as one HMG.
Thomas Raines
And just on this question, was there anything you wanted to add on the STSR specifically and how government can get more out of that?
Penny Mordaunt MP
So, the person who, I think, understands how to do an STSR really well, this may surprise you, I think is Lord Robertson, because Lord Robertson did what we haven’t really done in STSRs in recent, is that he asked other people. It was a highly consultative process, and for all reasons that I’ve given you tonight, unless we do that we’re not going to come out with the right answer because the answers don’t sit in Whitehall, they sit in our professions. They sit in all of the soft power that we’ve got, the incredible work that we do as a nation, and we – and that has to be central to the conversation. I have sat watching people move things around, spreadsheets for too long. That’s not how you really do this. It’s about thinking, “What are we trying to achieve?” and it’s really making sure that we’re sighted on all of the opportunities that are out there and that what we can do, and that way you also get an understanding about – you can put two and two together. You see facilities that actually the government doesn’t need to use anymore, but could become an amazing laboratory for finding solutions to healthcare problems, and that will help the domestic agenda as well. So, we’ve got to be able to join the dots up on this.
Thomas Raines
Okay, we’re running pretty short on time, so I’m going to take two questions very quickly and then I’m going to have to draw it to a close, I’m afraid. There’s one question right on the front row here. Keep it very brief, if you would.
Daniel Clarke
Daniel Clark, master student at UCL and member of Chatham House. Are you concerned that a rules-based immigration system may undermine some of the work that DFID does by causing a brain drain in poorer countries?
Thomas Raines
Okay, good question, just hold that very briefly one second, and then there’s a gentleman just at the back there. Sorry if I didn’t get your question in.
Domenic Carratu
Yeah, Domenic Carratu, Member of Chatham House. Some of the questions I was going to ask have been already asked. So, given you talk about the slogan of ‘Global Britain’, can you possibly comment on the revised Acheson comment, “We’ve lost an empire and a union and have yet to find a role?”
Thomas Raines
Okay, thanks very much. So, I noticed ‘Global Britain’ seemed to be dumped from the last Conservative manifesto as a phrase.
Penny Mordaunt MP
I did not write that, but…
Thomas Raines
No, fair enough. So, just one question on migration policy and on the, sort of, ‘Global Britain’ narrative.
Penny Mordaunt MP
So, you’re right, there is something morally abhorrent about not training enough healthcare professionals to look after our people and taking people that may well have been trained overseas and hoovering them up. So, I think that part of this is about being very clear about what we actually need as a nation. I do also think that there is a lot to be said for being able to help other nations train their own healthcare professionals. Part of the – a lot of the private sector schemes that I’m still trying to help, well, they’re charitable, but private money, are about building capacity in surgery, in the four main types of surgery, building – helping build healthcare systems. We have so much to contribute to that, and also, on – with regard to teaching, there are some amazing things that we could do and be part of the story about training up the – and getting – closing the gap that we’ve got on Teacher provision, which also will help us back at home. And one of the technologies that we – that DFID helped develop, which is a training tool and an education tool that we developed for places that didn’t have the right number of Teachers, was so effective it’s now being used in British schools. So, there’s a win-win here.
So, we do need to do more of that. I think we are yet to get into the detail of what kind of system we’re going to have, but those are the sorts of things that should be at its heart, and I also think – and one of the things that I think we should have done more of at DFID and was very keen that we did more of, was we do – although we probably all know about them and think that they’re a massive part of our aid budget, things like Commonwealth scholarships, I think are one of the greatest things that we do. They’re tiny. We invest – you know, I think it was, off the top of my head, about four million. We could do so much more on that front and really working in partnership with our great education institutions. And I think time spent thinking out a big offer on this, ‘cause if it’s not big, people won’t notice and if people won’t notice, they won’t come and help, would be time very well spent, indeed.
What does ‘Global Britain’ mean? Well, now we’re going to find out, but it comes back to my central point, that unless we know – unless we understand ourselves better, unless we understand what it is that makes us tick as a nation, also what we have in common with each other as well, as we’re coming out of this very divided period, we’re not going to be successful, and that’s a quick plug. What my book does is look at that. It looks at who we are, what makes us tick, what we can deduce, from how – not just how we think and the facts and figures, but how we feel as well, and extrapolate from that what our national and what our global mission is. Ad I don’t know what will happen over the next few days, weeks and months, but I think, actually, the British public have quite a clear idea about what we’re here to do, and if we listen a bit more, maybe we’ll arrive at it as well.
Thomas Raines
Alright, thank you very much, everyone, for coming. Sorry we didn’t get any – everybody’s questions in. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much to Penny for sharing all your thoughts and ideas with us. Thank you [applause].
