British Council ‘selling everything it can’ to survive

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The British Council faces “real financial risk” and is “selling whatever it can” to survive, the chief executive of the British Council warned on Tuesday, calling on ministers to resume talks on funding the international cultural body.

Scott MacDonald said he was overseeing a second restructuring since the pandemic to cut costs, but the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office urgently needed to resolve the organisation’s £197m Covid-era loan.

“We have made almost no progress [with the government] “Everything has stopped now,” MacDonald told MPs on Tuesday, warning that the authority “remains in real financial danger” despite 16 months of discussions.

He added: “We are now selling everything that the British Council owns and can sell. We do not have anything else.” “if it was [soft power] It’s worth it, and the UK needs to fund it. If it’s not worth it, we can start reducing the workload further.

While pushing for increased government funding, MacDonald said the cultural body plans to cut further jobs, sell assets including buildings worth around £90m and close operations in 35 countries as part of the restructuring.

He added that the plan could only go ahead with the approval of the British Foreign Office and if the British Council – which was founded in 1934 and is an independent body of the Whitehall administration – could access cash from asset sales.

“We have partners around the world who depend on us for financial sustainability… Without being able to say to the world ‘we are in fact a viable organisation’, it is very difficult for us to function,” MacDonald told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

He warned that forced repayment of the £197m commercial loan, issued by the previous Conservative government during the pandemic to keep the organization afloat, due in September 2026, would lead to its “complete withdrawal”.

Transferring the British Council’s art collection, which consists of around 9,000 objects and is worth around £200 million, to the government was a “good solution”. [to the loan] For everyone, but we have no traction [from ministers] MacDonald pointed this out.

He added that the loan could also be written off “with the right political will”, describing the authority’s annual interest payments of between £12m and £15m as “unwise”.

The British Foreign Office said: “The British Council’s record of support is clear… No decisions have been taken on funding future grants, however we continue to work with the British Council and Her Majesty’s Treasury to reach a decision on the outstanding loan.”

The UK’s international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities works in around 100 countries and will reach 650 million people in 2021-2022. But its main sources of income – teaching, exams and development contracts – have come under pressure since the pandemic, while movements in exchange rates have affected the value of some of its currency holdings.

In January, Foreign Secretary David Lammy launched the Soft Power Council, saying the government advisory council would help “strengthen our security and drive economic growth.” The late Harvard professor Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” to describe a state’s ability to get what it wants “through attraction, not coercion or push.”

Council member MacDonald said Lammy was “passionate” about soft power in his position, noting that the British Council was involved in “most of the work” of the new group.

We will have to see if he is the new Secretary of State [Yvette Cooper] He has the same desire to keep her [it] He added.