David Warren

International parental child abduction

2009-10-26T07:17:06+00:00

Earlier this month, I took part in a joint meeting, with seven other Embassies in Japan (including the US, France, Italy, Canada and others) with the new Justice Minister, Ms Chiba.

We were urging the Japanese Government to ratify the Hague Convention on Child Abduction. Japan is the only one of the G7 major developed countries that hasn't done this. The Hague Convention puts in place a legal framework for cases where there is disagreement over the custody of children between parents who are nationals of different countries, and one parent takes the children to live in their country against the wishes of the other. Britain has 37 such cases at present involving Japan, where custody is disputed. Signature of the Hague Convention would at least mean that there was an agreed procedure for handling such cases - starting with the child being returned to their country of habitual residence, where the courts should determine what custody arrangments are in his or her best interest.

The Minister said that the new Government was considering the issue and that a decision would be made in due course. There is increasing public discussion of this question here, particularly in light of a very high-profile recent American case; there have also been recent questions in the British Parliament. I made the point in the meeting with the Minister that Japan, together with all the countries represented there, had signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We do hope that the Japanese Government will conclude that Japan's isolation in this area should end sooner rather than later. We are keen to work with Japan to help the experts here understand how the Hague Convention works in those countries that have signed it - and how it protects nationals of all the signatory countries when child custody disputes occur.

Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

2009-10-15T09:02:35+01:00

Blog Action Day 2009 We welcome the new Japanese Government’s commitment to a 25% reduction target by 2020, as part of a comprehensive deal at the COP15 meeting in December in Copenhagen. It continues to be controversial here in some parts of Japanese business.

Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, visited Tokyo last week, and sent a powerful message to Japanese industry that there isn’t going to be a high-carbon future; and that the “first movers” in such an environment will have the business advantage. My sense is that that message is beginning to get across. But we are working hard to reinforce it in our own contacts.

Trip to Akita

2009-10-06T03:52:07+01:00

I paid a very interesting visit to Akita, in the north of Japan, in September, to talk to students at the Akita International University there - a high-quality, but still quite small, institution. The working language on campus is English, and all the degree students complete one year of study abroad (and about a quarter of their graduation requirements in this way). There is a long list of one for one student exchanges with many of the world's best universities, including ten in the UK (with Leeds at the top of the list in terms of numbers at the moment).

The University have been kind enough to invite a number of foreign Ambassadors to talk about the role of Japan in a changing world, and I kicked off the season with a talk mainly on climate change. You can read the full text here. It followed the new Prime Minister's commitment to the new medium term emission reduction target of 25% by 2020, which we strongly welcome. Prime Minister Hatoyama made this a key message in his appearances at the UN General Assembly last week.

We had a lively and friendly Q and A discussion. One man asked me why I was saying all this in Akita, which has a beautiful rural environment (it does), when whenever he'd been to London, he'd seen precisely the opposite! (I hope I responded diplomatically.) On the other hand, another questioner asked whether there were ways in which UK industry could help get the message across to Japanese business that the target was achievable. Yes, people worry about what the economic effects of the new policy will be. But the reality is that Japan has the technology to make this work. And making it work will help get the economy moving again.

I was also fascinated by the emphasis on agricultural self-sufficiency - not just with this audience, but when I saw the Governor and the Mayor the following day. What Japanese see as a low level (around 40%) is a worry here, and particularly in a very rural area like Akita - much more so than in the UK where the emphasis is different. I make the point that the price of Japanese rice is still much higher than on the world market. In Europe, there is a much greater sense of how wrong it is to subsidise food prices when farmers in developing countries have difficulty making ends meet. And in the UK the issue is now seen as one of food security - secured through diverse sources of supply and open trading relationships - rather than as being purely about domestic production.

And it's great to meet the British students at the University, and some of the young British teachers working here on the JET scheme, and to be stimulated by their enthusiasm and energy, as they settle into what is for many an unfamiliar but very exciting environment.

Meeting with Sir Philip Craven

2009-09-18T02:29:52+01:00

Last week, I was delighted to meet Sir Philip Craven, the President of the International Paralympic Committee since 2001 and a five-time Paralympian in wheelchair basketball, as well as swimming. He is a Member of the International Olympic Committee and a Board Member of the London 2012 Organising Committee.

He was in Tokyo for the Asian Youth Paralympic Games - 700 athletes from 40 countries - and we talked about how Japan has developed strongly in this area over the past few years. Some of my other blog entries have touched on this theme. There is a greater awareness of the diversity of sporting experience now in Japan than I remember from 10 or 20 years ago. And of course, there is going to be intense focus in Japan over the next two weeks on the run-up to the announcement on 2 October of the host city for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, for which Tokyo is one of the four final bidders.

Mr Hatoyama's comments on tackling climate change

2009-09-08T08:14:32+01:00

A clear re-affirmation yesterday from Prime Minister-elect Hatoyama, at the Asahi newspaper's "World Environmental Conference", that a Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government will press ahead with their manifesto commitment to a 25% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 (from 1990 levels) in the negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto framework at COP 15 in Copenhagen in December.

It will have to be part of an overall deal to which developed and developing countries will contribute. But this is good news, and evidence of the greater ambition for which we have been pressing the Japanese government this year. And a desire by the new Government that Japan should be showing leadership in this debate - indeed, the Prime Minister-elect referred specifically to a new "Hatoyama Initiative".

The talk at the evening reception was all about this commitment. The Danish Ambassador and I were invited to speak, as well as a long line of Japanese politicians and business representatives. To be eighth out of about ten speakers is a cruel punishment for both the speaker and the audience, so I tried to keep it brief. We haven't got long before Copenhagen. We can't afford to lower our sights, if we're going to ensure that global emissions peak within the next 10 years and we keep the increase in global temperature to within 2 degrees. And investment in the "Green New Deal" will help make economies grow, not (as some in Japanese industry fear) shrink.

Trip to Nagoya

2009-09-04T08:05:07+01:00

Fascinating trip to Nagoya, in Central Japan, this week to see three major Japanese investors in the UK.

First, Yamazaki Mazak, the largest machine tools manufacturer in the world. Ninety years old this year. Its first product in 1919 was a machine for making Japanese tatami matting. Now the showroom gleams with the widest imaginable range of products made with their machine tools - everything from artificial hips to aero engine turbine blades. Yamazaki have had a factory in Worcester since 1987, employing 500 people - it's won the Queen's Award twice, and will be opening its European Technology Centre in Worcester in November.

Then Denso, part of the Toyota Motor group, and the world's top-ranked manufacturer of car electronic and electrical parts, which employs around 2000 people at three sites in the West Midlands, centred on Telford. The company supports a supply chain in the UK with more than 150 suppliers. We spend a long time looking at the incredibly detailed and meticulous "hands-on learning" and technical skills training approach - the company has had over 100 Gold Laureates at the international Skills Olympics over the past 30 years. But then, as someone says to us, if you're going to employ someone for 40 years, it's worth investing three years in training them so that they can operate at the highest possible skills level required. I watch one of the production lines - 100 tiny, automated processes to make the motor that operates the needle in the speedo dial on your dashboard. Around 3 million of these are made every month.

And finally, a tour round the Toyota factory at Tsutsumi, to see the Prius rolling off the production line. 6000 people and 1000 robots work at Tsutsumi. There is something deeply impressive in watching six robots at a time delicately welding each car body as they slowly process down the line - a sort of beautiful mechanical ballet. Everywhere I look, the theme is environmental. Half the power needed for the final assembly plant at Tsutsumi comes from solar panels on the roof. [view photos on our flickr]

It's a cliche, and also wrong, to say that "manufacturing is dead". Some of the older people I talk to on this trip lament that the younger generation don't have the same attachment to making things that they did. But the impression I come away with is of cutting-edge processes and the highest standards of quality control. And Japanese industrial strengths have helped enormously to strengthen the British industrial base in recent years keeping us as the world's 6th largest manufacturing nation. The big news of the summer for us was Toyota's decision to put hybrid production into its Derbyshire plant, and Nissan's to make electric car batteries in Sunderland. Helping to make these relationships is very exciting and satisfying work.

An epoch-making election result

2009-09-01T04:08:46+01:00

We all woke up on Monday morning to an election result that can genuinely be described as epoch-making. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan has decisively beaten the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power for most of the last 54 years, and has never been seriously under threat of defeat before. Records tumbled all night. Record turnout (nearly 70%). Record size of victory (no winning party in the Lower House has ever had more than 300 seats before). Record number of women MPs (though still very low by European standards - 54).

Now we are moving into the phase in which the new Government party will be sorting out how it intends to govern and specifically how it is going to tackle the changes it wants to make to the machinery of government. The DPJ have been swept into office in part with a mandate to reform the relationship between politicians and the powerful bureaucracy. Everyone will be watching closely - as they do after elections the world over - how the opposition make the transition from saying what needs to be done to actually doing it.

But the consensus is that this really is a watershed in post-war Japanese politics - a rejection of the old political system, which was perceived as out of touch with voters' concerns, and a call for change - even if there isn't necessarily agreement on precisely what sort of change people want to see.

Reducing Emissions - More Ambition Needed

2009-06-16T07:50:15+01:00

Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Aso announced Japan's mid-term (2020) target for emissions reductions - 8% from a 1990 baseline. The target looks slightly better when compared with 2005 figures - 15%. The international reaction has been critical - a lot of people were hoping that the Japanese would set out a more ambitious plan in the run-up to the Copenhagen meeting this December, where the successor framework to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol must be agreed. The UK's targets are considerably tougher - 34% on 1990 figures, and around 22% on 2005.

The announcement follows months of work by the Mid-Term Target Committee. They considered six options, ranging from allowing emissions to rise from 1990 levels to a 25% decrease on 1990. The outcome, of course, is a compromise - Japan knows that it must contribute to the international negotiations that will develop the new framework, but the Government does not want to pass on extra costs to households in an economically difficult time. However the costs of not tackling climate change will be even greater, as shown by Lord Stern's 2006 report on the economics of climate change. The target is domestic - the Japanese haven't said anything yet about how they might use the international carbon market, and emissions trading (on which Japanese industry are not keen).

We'd still like to see more ambition, and a focus on long-term benefit rather than short-term costs. A low carbon economy can lead to real opportunities for business. Japanese technology is cutting edge and her energy-saving record impressive. We have an important opportunity to get this message across later this week, when Adair Turner, the Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority and of the Climate Change Committee, will be visiting Japan to talk to the Japanese Government and others about both financial regulation and next steps in environmental policy.

Burma

2009-06-01T03:53:09+01:00

The British Government is supporting a new website launched by a coalition of campaign groups to put pressure on the Burmese regime to release Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy campaigner, who has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention. She was supposed to be released this week from house arrest - instead she has been put on trial in Rangoon for violating the terms of her imprisonment and faces another 5 years in prison. The website invites everyone - politicians, celebrities, ordinary people - to post a short message of support for her. I've done this. I hope as many people reading this blog will do so too. Her continued arrest and imprisonment is a fundamental abuse of human rights and we must all do what we can to secure her release.

New Visa Systems

2009-05-26T02:01:59+01:00

We have introduced new systems for issuing visas for the UK in Japan recently, and things have not gone as smoothly as we had hoped.

The new Points Based System for visa applications to the UK in theory will make the process much quicker and simpler. Most Japanese visitors do not need a visa anyway. Those that do will usually fall into Tier 2 (skilled worker that includes intra company transfers which must be accompanied by a Certificate of Sponsorship) or Tier 4 (for students). The website of our commercial partner VFS Global, handling visa applications, sets out the documents that need to be submitted. Understandably, perhaps, in the first stages of a new process, not everybody presents the right documents, which can mean delay.

We used to issue visas in the Embassy in Tokyo, but from January, this work was moved to the British Embassy in Manila. This "hub and spoke" arrangement will apply to other British Embassies in East Asia. This means that the documents that accompany the visa applications will be couriered to Manila and returned with the application once it has been processed. The process is totally secure. But the new arrangements have taken some time to settle down, and, in spite of all the efforts of our excellent colleagues in Manila, visas have taken longer to issue than was the case before. We're tackling this, with their help, and with the help of the UK Border Agency in London (who are responsible for this work), and the process is speeding up. But I have received more complaints than I should have liked while this has been happening.

I'm talking about this on my blog for two reasons. Japanese readers planning to visit the UK will want to know what the requirements are and ensure that they let the visa application centre have the right documents. And I think that a blog should talk about problems and things that haven't gone smoothly as well as celebrate the things that have. Protecting the UK's borders is crucial. But so is maintaining the UK as a friendly and supportive environment for Japanese investors and travellers. We're determined to ensure that we do this.

We Want the Blue Sky

2009-05-22T06:12:57+01:00

While in Fukuoka prefecture, I visited the city of Kitakyushu, which has an interesting environmental history. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was immensely polluted. This part of Kyushu has been a transport crossroads for centuries, with iron and coal from China contributing to massive heavy industry development - steel, potteries, cement. This turned the bay and the surrounding environment into a toxic sink of chemicals. Driven mainly by local women's groups - largely made up of the wives of the men who were working in the local steel factories - a powerful environmental movement pushed through a comprehensive clean up and turned the city by the 1990s into an attractive, ecologically friendly centre of environmental and alternative energy research. "We want the blue sky for our children" was the slogan.

An impressive local museum, on a former industrial site, tells the story. It's fascinating to see the 1960s home movies taken by Kitakyushu women, recording the soot and dust continually blowing into the small terraced houses, blackening the "shoji" screens and freshly washed sheets hung out to dry. And Kitakyushu also has Japan's only independent (but originally Government-subsidised) research centre on Asian womens' issues, established in the late 1980s.

Getting the change message across

2009-05-22T06:11:03+01:00

I've been down to the southern city of Fukuoka to talk to the local Japan-British Society on "Britain Today". The idea of Britain in the minds of some Japanese can be very old-fashioned. Many Japanese who have studied in Britain have an attachment to the traditions of the country, and this can take the form of thinking of the UK in terms of the old concept of the "Eikoku shinshi" (English gentleman), more familiar to the Victorians and Edwardians. It comes with deep affection and respect for Britain, but part of my job is to explain the way Britain has changed and is changing - becoming a more diverse, less deferential, less hierarchical society - how the structure of government has changed with devolution, how the role of the Royal Family has changed over the last 50 years.

The figure I quote of 40% of all Londoners having been born outside the UK makes quite an impact - Japan has a very low level of immigration, and a public debate is beginning on how sustainable this is, considering the long-term demographic trends of a shrinking and ageing population. I point out that my own grandparents were immigrants to Britain - from Russia - over 100 years ago.

Waiting for the emissions reductions target

2009-05-20T08:45:50+01:00

The big issue at the moment - probably at any moment - is climate change. We are all waiting for the Japanese Prime Minister to announce Japan's mid-term target for emissions reductions. This will be a crucial element in the preparations for the Copenhagen conference at the end of the year to agree a follow up framework to Kyoto. An intense debate is taking place here.

An advisory committee has produced six scenarios, from minus 25% to plus 4% on 1990 levels. The latter is favoured by the Keidanren, the Japanese industrial federation. I don't believe that it will be seen internationally as a credible response by Japan to the urgent need for developed countries to take the difficult decision and make major cuts. The other major industrial federation, the Keizai Doyukai, have gone for minus 7%. Even this strikes me as insufficiently ambitious on its own. The discussion in the Japanese press tends to focus on fairness and whether Japan can afford the costs of the action that some are pressing it to take now. But the costs will get worse if we delay, and the issue isn't fairness - it's how all of us in developed countries show global responsibility and bring the developing world into the negotiation.

Many of my meetings with Japanese industry and government are focused on this issue, and how the debate can be brought to address the benefits, rather than just the costs, of action now.

Talking to young people in Japan about the EU

2009-05-11T07:18:07+01:00

Last Friday, I went out to a high school at Tokorozawa, in Saitama, part of Greater Tokyo, to speak to the top three years about the EU. It was Europe Day on 9 May and most of the EU Ambassadors in Tokyo were doing school trips of this kind. I didn't honestly fancy my chances of gripping an audience of a thousand 16-, 17- and 18-year olds, with a half-hour presentation in Japanese on the intricacies of EU history and the relationship between the Council of Ministers, the Commission and the European Parliament. But the audience were not only appreciative but full of questions - why don't some countries want to join and does that worry those that have? why doesn't everyone belong to the Eurozone? how is the EU dealing with the current economic crisis and what are they doing to sort out the balance of payments problems of some of the Eastern and Southern European countries that are suffering? One pupil asked what lessons East Asia might learn from the EU's history of reconciliation. The ideas I was trying to discuss - creating a peaceful Europe after half a century of conflict, and unity out of diversity - resonate with younger Japanese.

Designs for living

2009-03-10T06:18:23+00:00

We wound up the year-long campaign "UK-Japan 2008" last week, with a big event at the Embassy. It was set up to celebrate 150 years since diplomatic relations were established between Britain and Japan, in the wake of Japan's opening up to the West in the years before the Meiji Restoration in 1868. We started with 100 or so events, and ended up with over 330. Of course, a lot were cultural in nature, and very successful and popular they were too - big art exhibitions, including a Turner Prize retrospective at Tokyo's new Mori Art Museum, the London Symphony Orchestra touring Japan, a marvellous V and A show linking William Morris with the Japanese Arts and Crafts movement. But the emphasis was also on science, innovation and creativity - an exhibition on Darwin, lectures by British Nobel Prizewinners, avant-garde theatre, community projects in all areas of the arts.

We had nearly 1000 bloggers taking part in the campaign, around 3000 articles over the year, and about 1000 people view each article, so the total number of people we're reaching must be well up into six figures, if not beyond We gave prizes to the ten top blogs at the closing ceremony. We also rewarded three projects in each of the areas that the campaign covered. One was in the field of contemporary dance, and I had a fascinating conversation at the event with the head of the Japanese Contemporary Dance Network about dance in the community, and the work he does with people with disabilities. I don't think I would have had quite the same exchange when I was last in Japan eleven years ago. I ask whether this is an example of how Japan is changing - greater sensitivity towards some aspects of diversity. He says yes, true - but there is still some way to go.

Design is a major aspect of creativity, of course. There are lots more British architects and designers working in Japan than when I was last here in the 90s. But how can we get the message across in Japan that Britain is a modern country, not a Victorian theme park? Sir Terence Conran came into the Embassy to talk to a group of Japanese design specialists on Friday afternoon about what Britain has to offer. He is one of UK Trade and Investment's new "Business Ambassadors" - senior business people who spend some of their time when travelling promoting Britain more generally. It's fascinating to listen to his more than fifty years of experience of design for living. His theme, of course, is partly the economic crisis, but also partly environmental. People are more likely in the future to want the simple, the rational, the uncluttered. Not the ornate, the baroque, the over-decorated. A return to austerity? Or maybe just quality over quantity?

UK Foreign and Health Ministers in Japan

2009-03-02T07:27:04+00:00

The big economic news here this week is the collapse of Japanese exports in January - 46% down on last year. The big firms are laying off staff, cutting back production (but not R and D) and generally settling in for a long and difficult haul.

But not quite everywhere. Alan Johnson, the UK Health Secretary, has been with us for four days, with a high-powered delegation from the Department of Health and the UK industry (as well as the head of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) to talk to the Japanese pharmaceutical companies. They're major investors in the UK - doing research, sales, manufacturing, and employing hundreds of people. The UK team give detailed presentations about the new NHS framework, stressing how important innovation is going to be in developing cost-effective treatments, and explaining the new pricing arrangments for companies. The Japanese firms listen closely, ask questions, raise issues, for example about how fast new drugs can be approved. The impression I get is that this sector is less affected by the economic downturn than others. Indeed, a number of companies look interested in expanding their investments at some point. Eisai, one of the largest Japanese pharma firms, is opening a new "Knowledge Centre" in Hatfield in June.

Meanwhile, the focus of much of the rest of our work remains the economic crisis, and particularly the London Summit of the major economies on 2 April. Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch-Brown visited on 19 Febraury and called on Prime Minister Aso and Foreign Minister Nakasone, as well as talking to the press. He emphasises the need to have a co-ordinated international response to a global crisis on this scale, and to ensure that we don't just slip back into the bad old days of protectionism - and that we also make sure that the poorest countries don't suffer in a crisis that is not of their making. The Japanese agree on all these points. They're loaning the International Monetary Fund $100 billion to make it easier to lend to countries in need. And they're also focusing their assistance specifically on Asia and Africa. Japan has to find a way of stimulating its domestic demand, like everyone else. But its most important leadership role is more likely to be to get global demand moving.

The questions to Mark at the Foreign Correspondents Club tend to be about the Japanese Finance Minister who had to resign after allegedly being drunk, rather than the state of the world economy, but that's life (and news), I guess.

Building a closer relationship with Japan

2009-02-18T13:57:30+00:00

I am delighted to become one of the FCO's bloggers. I'll be posting reports and comments in English and Japanese about the work we are doing in Japan to build an even closer relationship with the world's second largest economic power.

This week, the focus has been on science and innovation.   The British Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, John Beddington has been visiting with a large team from the UK Research Councils. He saw Japanese scientists and scientific facilities in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. He also had a day's conference with his opposite numbers in the Japanese Government to take stock of the collaboration that is going on and identify new areas in which we can do more.

Of course, climate change and management of natural resources are high on the list. John is a specialist in the latter area and on Thursday night, he made a powerful speech in the Embassy about the challenge facing the world. We need 50% more food, 50% more energy resources and 30% more water by 2050 to meet the needs of a population that will grow to 9 billion - that's equivalent to adding another country the size of Japan to the world every two years.

The Japanese audience - journalists, scientists, MPs - listen closely and ask some penetrating questions. What about GM crops: are they publicly acceptable?   What about population control, ditto? The Q and A session belies the traditional stereotype of Japanese public meetings being formal, slightly bland affairs. The tone is friendly but the questions are probing.   The hour that John spent beforehand at a "science media cafe" in the Embassy with a dozen science editors and journalists will have helped.

Japan accounts for nearly 25% of the world's spending on R and D, with just 2% of the world's population.   And there is no evidence that the world economic slowdown, for all that the effects in Japan have been severe, is going to reduce that priority. How to help UK scientists and engineers be part of this activity is a major challenge for us.

Meanwhile, that same night, the news is breaking that the Agility consortium, which is led by Hitachi, have been named as preferred bidder for the new UK Inter-City train contract.   This will be an important new investment from Japan into the UK. The Super Express will be longer and lighter than its counterparts, and greener as well - some will operate as bi-mode (diesel and electric).    But I'm struck by some of the negative comment in the UK the following day.

There's a sense that Japanese involvement in this project is somehow unpatriotic, despite the jobs that will be created, or safeguarded, in the UK.   The reality is that Hitachi is one of over 1400 Japanese firms who have invested heavily in the UK over the last thirty years - some going back even further than that - and the close industrial and business links that have grown as a result between all parts of the United Kingdom and Japan have been a real success story. We mustn't let the sort of protectionist sentiments that find a voice at a time of economic crisis threaten that. And remember, the UK sells £8 billion worth of goods and services to Japan every year as well. Trade and investment links are win-win.