70 years on we should know what the British Council is. Do we?
The best place to start is perhaps with how the British Council describes itself. It is a “national public body that operates independently of government but for which ministers are ultimately responsible”. Whether or not our political leaders really do accept responsibility for an organisation outside their control, the meaning of the phrase “independently of government” is, in the context of the British Council, a little stretched.
The British Council is “sponsored” by the FCO. The FCO describes the British Council (on their own website) as “The FCO’s main vehicle for cultural relations with other countries”. This year the FCO are providing public funding (“grant-in-aid”) for the British Council to the tune of £186.2 million, representing well over a third of its income. Roughly another third comes from contracts with government departments, notably DFID, with whom the organisation enjoys a long standing and close relationship. Around another third of its income comes from its “enterprises”, notably the language schools. The British Council might find that maintaining these cash cows would be a lot harder if they were in competition with local enterprise on a truly equal footing, and if they did not have the cushion of substantial public funding. The bigger picture suggests that the British Council’s relationship with government, and through government with the great British taxpayer, is pretty well symbiotic.
The British Council is also a registered charity. On the website of the Charity Commission will be found the “key legal principle” that “Charities must be independent of government and other funders”. If that sentence is a good candidate for a plain English award, the interpretation of it looks sophisticated. The British Council and the Charity Commission and Her Majesty’s Government presumably all agree that the British Council is indeed independent of government. As a simple taxpayer I say that the notion does not stand up to the “eyeball test”.
The British Council is also run as a “business”, meaning its ability to earn money independently of the state; and the more they can earn through their “enterprises” the less dependent – at least in relative terms - they presumably are. But businesslike they are not, as our own experience will illustrate. After extended (2002-2004) correspondence with the British Council in respect of an issue, we were eventually referred by the Director-General to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (a.k.a the Official Ombudsman) on the basis that the British Council was subject to the scrutiny of that office, and we duly made our submission through our Member of Parliament. The reply from the Ombudsman’s office states (inter alia): “Under the provisions of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 (schedule 3, paragraph 9), the Ombudsman cannot investigate any action taken in matters relating to contractual or other commercial transactions…there is, therefore, no basis on which she could intervene”.
It may be that the Director-General was unaware of this statutory limitation on the role of the Ombudsman, and therefore also of the accountability vacuum in such aspects of the organisation’s dealings, in which case we have, as a result of this exercise, at least ensured that the same mistake will not be made again.
Public communications from the British Council can also lack transparency. For example, in relation to the contract for the Education UK website, the Council made the following announcement (still on their website): “After a rigorous selection procedure, the British Council entered into a contractual partnership with a consortium led by Hotcourses to develop the Education UK website and associated databases. The other consortium members are UCAS, CSU and Yahoo!”
Few readers of that announcement would be likely to guess that a) the British Council had contracted (for “the entire agreement”) with a newly incorporated (2 week old) £100 company called Education Websites Ltd, or b) that the contract they signed did not mention the existence of a consortium, or c) that the contract did not mention Hotcourses or Yahoo, or d) that the contract said “It is acknowledged that a shareholder in the Contractor is UCAS Enterprises Limited, not the Universities and Colleges Admissions Services (UCAS) and that UCAS has no liability whatsoever in respect of the Contract, the Tender or otherwise”, or e) that the contract requires that the Council be paid a share of the profits from the project. The liability was therefore just £100, which seems a bit lightweight for a contract with a “national body” on the back of the “Prime Minister’s Initiative”, and the British Council’s rigorous selection process evidently resulted in the choice of an organisation that agreed to pay them. We do not say that the rigour and the weight of the selection process was necessarily in danger of being compromised by the financial interest of the selector, but the less than transparent public presentation of the arrangements does not inspire confidence. And it is a long way from being businesslike.
As a postscript we note that in March this year the British Council’s contractor Education Websites Ltd changed its name to Remone Ltd and applied to be struck off the register of companies. At the same time a Bristol-based company, incorporated in 2005, called Remone Ltd changed its name to Education Websites Ltd. The arrangements have evidently changed.
It may be that one reason that the British Council has an unbusinesslike culture is that the career structure of a British Council officer is so varied. In fact the career structure appears to most observers to put a varied life for the officer ahead of the development of a marketable expertise or a regional / cultural / linguistic specialism. A real business forced by economic circumstances to make the best use of its human resources, and act in the best interests of its clients, would surely do things differently. Businesses in the real world also know that enterprise is associated with risk, the risk of losing real people’s money, and that the risk is minimised by the efficient mobilisation of appropriate expertise. In the case of the British Council that risk does not exist, neither therefore does true enterprise, nor the pressure that comes with it to make the most efficient and productive use of resources.
So is it a bird or is it a plane? If it’s a charity then the issue of independence from government could certainly be rather less of a cocktail. If it’s a vehicle for government departments then there’s some basic repositioning to be done. Whatever it is, what is surely unsatisfactory in a modern democratic enterprise economy is that the British Council should have public funding and enjoy charitable status and make apparently secretive commercial arrangements with no accountability.
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