B

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 13 February 2025

Debate

British Council

Contribution

My Lords, I had the privilege of being chair of the British Council for six years, at the beginning of this century—which was quite a while ago, when I was a much younger woman. As I travelled the world, looking at the projects that were conducted by the British Council, I found that it was the envy of the world. It was the envy of France and Germany; they too had cultural organisations, but those never had the reach or success rate of the British Council. The scandal has been the diminution of the government grant to the British Council over the last 15 years. Given the situation we are facing—where we are watching the United States retreat from the world and from obligations to the world, and from the soft power that it exercised through USAID—is this not the very moment when we should be stepping forward and making sure that we are the people who can do soft power better than anyone? Can there not be an increase in the grant to the British Council and assistance in dealing with this debt?

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