UK: Call for U-turn on Whitehall language centre closure

[Harold Schiffman]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Call for U-turn on Whitehall language centre closure

David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
Tuesday July 10, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

David Miliband is being asked to reverse "a moronic decision" to close
down a secure Whitehall language training school attended by GCHQ and
security services staff fighting the "war on terror". A leaked private
letter sent by six Labour MPs and one senior Tory to the new foreign
secretary describes in colourful language anger and resentment in the
Foreign Office about the closure, and accuses a present member of the
government, Lord Triesman, of being "uncooperative, obstructive and
unhelpful" when previously lobbied by MPs to save the centre

The letter is also signed by an assistant government whip, Tom Watson,
whose name should have been removed when he joined the government on
the day it was sent.
Siôn Simon, Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington, the main author of the
letter, tonight accepted the blame for keeping his name on the letter
by mistake. The Foreign Office language school offers the security
services, diplomats and MPs specialised individual lessons in 41
languages, including Farsi and Arabic, as well as most European
languages, by "security vetted" staff in Whitehall.

The ministry will save £1m from its £1.8bn annual budget by closing
the centre and making its 104 staff redundant. The leaked letter -
obtained by Guardian Unlimited - accuses the Foreign Office of not
applying "political intelligence" to the decision and of issuing an
"untruthful official FCO line" on the proposed closure. "Something
Britain is good at, which is important, is going to be destroyed, to
the detriment of our diplomacy and our national security, for no good
reason other than the potential saving of a neglible amount of
money... a hundred public servants, many of them vulnerable foreign
nationals, having provided a vital service to the British state for 20
years, are being treated disgracefully by a Labour government.

" We have been trying to makes these points to David Triesman for
several months, but he has been unco-operative, obstructive and
unhelpful. Heads of mission [ambassadors] complained early in the
process and were told by FCO services to shut up." "Many FCO
officials, from junior to the most senior levels, have told Language
Training informally that they were surprised by the decision and a
deplore "a profoundly mistaken", "moronic decision","short-sighted
destruction of what took years to build up" and "dismantling a very
valuable asset". The MPs warn: "The fundamental misapprehension on
which the closure policy is based is that there is a generic language
skill that can be taught and learnt anywhere.

"This may be true at a basic level (ordering a meal, organising a
holiday). It is not true when a higher level of understanding and
expression is required: negotiation; understanding complex
conversations; dealing with the media; reading between the lines;
handling emergencies. such skills are specialised, and require a
deeper knowledge of language and its context, and more intense
practice than normal language teaching seeks to impart." Sir Peter
Ricketts, permanent secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
has defended the decision to MPs on the Commons foreign affairs
committee. He told them: "FCO Services was not willing to continue
with the language centre because it did not regard it as commercially
viable ...

"Therefore we concluded that it would be better use of public money to
outsource the language teaching requirement, while making sure that we
maintain standards and quality and that we can continue to offer the
same level of language access to other government departments and
members of the house who wish to have it, but on a private-sector
basis rather than maintaining an in-house language school." The six
Labour MPs who signed the letter are Siôn Simon; Andy Slaughter,
Patrick Hall, Mark Lazarowicz, Alan Simpson and Rob Marris. The sole
Tory is Michael Jack . Tonight David Lidington, the Tory frontbench
foreign affairs spokesman, backed the MPs and called on the government
to halt the closure.

"David Miliband should look at this again because the language school
is an important institution for training people in key languages", he
said.

Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330171291-110471,00.html

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************