more than three quarters of the staff were local employees and of the highest calibre—you could get them reasonably inexpensively, of course—so it was a superb operation. Wright (Chair): May I just interrupt you on that? I had a lot to do with the British Council during my time. In my last five years, I was actually on the Council, and what Robert says about the wish to separate themselves—not just from the High Commission, but from the Foreign Office and from politics and diplomacy—was absolutely widespread and went right up to the chairmanship of the British Council. I am glad to say that I think, from such contacts as I have, that that feeling has gone. It might perhaps take us on later to a discussion about international development, because—I display my cards—I deplore the separation of DFID from the Diplomatic Service, because the two should be working much more closely together. I am sorry; I have gazumped you twice. Goodall: May I just pursue the British Council for a moment? When I was there, I must say that, presumably due to Robert’s efforts, the British Council did not maintain that separatist attitude and were very good. Wade-Gery: But it only lasted a month— Goodall: The head of the British Council in India was a Minister in the High Commission. I remember that one of the things in Robert’s valedictory despatch from India was to stress the importance of the educational links between India and Britain, and the fact that so many more Indians were by then going to study in the United States than were coming to Britain. I thought it was of enormous importance—the work and the educational links, which over the years we had allowed to grow weaker and which had been replaced by the plethora of scholarships available in the United States and so on. The whole existence of British culture—rather symbolised by my security guard asking about the poet Keats—was the background to a lot of what went on in India. There was a tremendous admiration for it, and the British Council maintained libraries in 11 Indian cities; I do not think that they are able to do that now. It was a much wider question than the teaching of English—I think now you can pay to learn English through the British Council and all that—but the role of the British Council, reinforced by the BBC, of keeping alive this respect for British culture and the desire to study in Britain and so on was tremendously important. One of the messages I got from Robert’s dispatch, which I tried to hammer away at all the time, was the need for us to have more scholarships available for Indians to come and study in the UK, because you see how those links repay themselves just in hard materialistic terms as those scholars become adults and occupy important positions. Wright (Chair): I promise I am not running a campaign, but David has just touched on something which I feel very strongly about, and that is that Ambassadors and High Commissioners in the future will not, as I understand it, have the benefit of their predecessor’s valedictory despatch. I must say that I would not have liked to take over the three embassies of which I was ambassador without the benefit of my predecessor’s valedictories.32 Robert, I have now stopped you several times. 32
The practice of Ambassador’s valedictory despatch was discontinued in 2006.
25