Lesser-taught languages — House of Commons, 2015-03-24
Topic: International Affairs
Richard Michael Bacon (Conservative, Centre-right): I have an eager eye on the clock and I will abide by what you have said, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish to make a brief contribution Some 10 days ago—two weeks ago—in my capacity as co-chair of the all-party group on Iran, I helped host five Members of the Iranian Parliament here in Westminster for most of a week. When we were not in Westminster, one of the most interesting trips we did was to Cambridge, where we met the professor of Persian studies, some young British students who were studying Persian, some young members of the diaspora and some people who had come here from Iran to study at masters and at PhD level. On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) made, when we look at the statistics on this country’s exports to Iran, we find that, sadly, for a variety of reasons we are all too familiar with, they have been going down. Interestingly, that has been while United States’ exports in areas where the US has a competitive advantage, such as agriculture and pharmaceuticals, have been increasing substantially There will come a time when our relations with Iran, including our commercial relations, are able to flourish and prosper in the way that many of us would like to see. When that time comes, we have to be ready. We need to be preparing for that now. We need to make it more normal to learn "lesser-taught languages" as they are termed in this debate. The best part of that description is "taught", because they are not lesser in any other sense. I am looking at my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) and I recall a friend of mine who is now at The Economist teaching me a phrase in Serbo-Croat many years ago which turned out to mean, "Why don’t you speak Serbo-Croat?" I have yet to find a useful use for it The truth of the matter, however, is that the single most human part of the encounter during the Iranians’ visit was when I recited a poem in Farsi that I had taken the trouble to learn. That opened a whole set of windows that had hitherto been closed in the way we dealt with each other. The Iranians went home, reporting back that they had had a very successful visit. I only hope we can do more business in the future and improve the relations between our countries, but the ability to communicate with each other is of the essence Let me make one point about the comments made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz). At one point in his speech he used the phrase "examination authorities". We all know what he means by that, but these people are not authorities; they are contractors. They have been given the chance by the state to offer qualifications, or they have qualifications that are widely recognised as if they have the force of the backing of the state, but the state does not have to leave it there. We are in an environment where we have been hearing the phrase "more for less" from many different domains for several years, and that is what we ought to expect of the examination authorities. Instead of saying, "We don’t have enough people to offer a Polish qualification, an Iranian qualification, a Serbo-Croat qualification or a Portuguese qualification", we should be saying, "These are the economies of the future, which are growing and with which we will be trading. Let’s find a way to make sure, by the use of imagination and wit, that we can do more for less. Either you come with us on this journey, provide more for less and show that you can do it, or we will find someone else who can."