---

Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Scheme

Like other noble Lords in this short debate—and I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Luce for having made it possible—I consider the Government’s original decision to exclude from the future scope of the Commonwealth scholarship scheme citizens from countries which used to be called the ““old Commonwealth”” to have been short-sighted and contrary to the interests of our own country, as well as being deeply offensive to, and resented by, the Governments of the countries concerned. I only hope that the Minister will find better arguments to justify the Government’s action than his colleagues have hitherto been able to muster. The Foreign Secretary’s justification of the decision as a switch to expenditure on climate change, although laudable in itself, was as clear a case of apples and oranges as I have ever heard. I should like to cast my net rather wider than the Commonwealth scholarship scheme and look also at the impact on the Marshall scholarship scheme for US citizens. That has been the object of similar damaging attempts at cheese-paring, to which this latter scheme has been subjected. The 2009-10 funding for Marshall scholarships is being held at the same figure as for 2008-09. That means a substantial reduction in real terms and a reduction in the number of Marshall scholarships which the Government are funding, thus continuing a process of reduction in that figure over several years. If there is no increase in this figure in future years, even more serious damage will be inflicted. I hope that the Minister will not try to mask these reductions in government-funded places by lumping them together with scholarships funded by the private sector, as was attempted in replies to Questions in the House some months ago. Quite apart from the singular lack of generosity epitomised by these cuts in a scholarship scheme designed as a way of thanking the US people for the Marshall Plan, the timing of these cuts is pretty breathtakingly obtuse. After eight years of considerable strain in the transatlantic relationship and a lamentable rise in feelings of anti-Americanism in this country, a new president has been elected in the United States who is committed to repairing the damage caused by his predecessor and to reaching out to America’s friends and allies, among whom, I imagine, this country figures. We choose that moment to reduce, in real terms, the financing for a scheme designed to achieve precisely those objectives. I really do not envy the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary having to defend those cuts when first meeting President Obama or his as yet unnamed Secretary of State. It could prove singularly embarrassing to do so. The case for protecting, indeed expanding, the Marshall scholarship scheme, goes far beyond questions of generosity on our part; it goes to the heart of what is now often called a nation’s ““soft power””—the influence it exerts in the world and its capacity to summon up support and backing in the future even when its relative position in the world pecking order may be reduced. Few schemes offer better value for money in that respect than the Marshall scheme and, indeed, the Commonwealth and Chevening schemes, all considered by various speakers. It will be interesting to see how many members of President Obama’s new Administration will turn out to be former Marshall scholars—quite a few, I suspect. We may not be able to say the same thing in 15 or 20 years’ time if this process of reduction continues; and we shall be the poorer for it. I think that it is well understood how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office got into this pickle. A tight spending round is being applied to a department with a relatively small budget, almost entirely consisting of sharp-end personnel costs, and with only a very few, very small expenditure programmes such as these scholarship schemes. Leviathans like DfID or the Ministry of Defence could protect valuable schemes such as these without turning a hair. However, the Foreign Office cannot, and it feels compelled to squeeze some of its own best valuable assets. It is surely high time for the Government to recognise that it is against our national interest to have created this quandary and to find some way of extricating themselves from it, as they seem to have begun to do by getting some funding for the old Commonwealth scholarships from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. I hope very much that the Minister will be able to tell us how that process of extrication from this lamentable decision is going to be carried on in future years.