ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: When you imagine the job of an Ambassador, especially at Christmas, you might think of political intrigue, diplomatic parties and therefore perhaps a certain brand of chocolate confectionary – you’re spoiling us!  But Matthew Barzun, America’s Ambassador to the UK spends an awful lot of his time in actual fact talking to schoolchildren here in the UK.  He is determined to listen to what young people think about the United States and explain a little bit more about how his country actually works.  In a moment I’ll speak to the Ambassador in person but first though here’s a flavour of some of the comments he heard from students at Cranford Community College in London this week when he asked them to write down their concerns about America.

MATTHEW BARZUN: Who would like to share with the group what they wrote down?

GIRL: What I am most frustrated about is religious education in America.

MATTHEW BARZUN: Religious education, too much, too little?  

GIRL: Too little and I’m concerned about gun laws.  

MATTHEW BARZUN: Did anyone else have guns or gun violence or guns written up there?  If you are a convicted felon you can’t have a gun, if you are mentally ill you can’t have a gun, you can’t have certain kinds of guns like machine guns you’re not allowed to have so we have made changes and President Obama is trying to make some more common sense changes to keep people safer.  How many of you have followed what’s happening in Ferguson, Missouri?  Okay, I think that’s 100%.  Peaceful protest is something that we allow in the United States, we allow it here in the United Kingdom and it’s worth none of us ever taking that for taking that for granted given that other people are getting shot for peacefully protesting elsewhere around the world.  

DM: And as I said, the Ambassador is here with me now.  Fascinating stuff and there is a lot more of that but let’s pick up with that point, you said almost 100% of them were aware of what’s been going in in Ferguson and other incidents have highlighted this key question, I’m sure the young people there put it to you, are elements of some police forces in the United States acting in a racist way?

MATTHEW BARZUN:  Well we talked about Ferguson there and one thing President Obama has said is look, we’ve talked about Ferguson and New York City recently, he said this is an American problem, this isn’t just isolated in any one area, there are too many places where the trust has just broken down in communities of colour between the law enforcement officials who are sworn to serve and protect those communities so he is doing, President Obama is doing a number of things to try to address that and at the same time it is also true that it’s an American problem, we have great examples in the United States of where community policing are working and how do you spread those ideas that are working to the communities where the trust has broken down?  That’s the work in progress.

DM: So how did you deal with those young people?  I’ll try and encapsulate what we’ve just heard in that short clip there, that it’s a gun toting nation with racist police who spend a lot of time in churches.  Did you say, hold on a minute, yes of course there are different facets to our society but it is multi-layered, very complex and very diverse?

MATTHEW BARZUN: Absolutely and what wasn’t in the clip, it’s a two part workshop and the first part is they draw a picture or write a word about something that frustrates, confuses and concerns them and that’s the bit that we saw there.  Then we have them flip over the card and on the other side of the card it says like, hope and inspire and it says what are the things that you like about the United States and there you hear American dream, diversity, opportunity and so it gives us a chance to talk about the positive attributes as well as their frustrations and it is a really good way for me to learn about what these young people, the future leaders of the UK, are thinking about.  

DM: And it’s interesting for us too in the media, how do they learn about the United States?  Are they learning about it mainly from news programmes and factual programmes, because of course the cultural power of the United States is massive and I noticed in that word map you had there Hollywood looms large doesn’t it?

MATTHEW BARZUN: Absolutely.  Look, entertainment is one way they get it, they’re following the news a lot I discovered and maybe not in newspapers as your group was reading around this table earlier but they are getting that great print journalism on their phones, on their computers and other ways so they are following that stuff.   

DM: So what do you find, because you understand both our societies, do you find that we know more about you, we know a lot about the United States and sometimes we are frankly quite shocked, those of us who travel around the United States, about the lack of knowledge within some parts of the United States about what goes on in the United Kingdom, what goes on in Europe?

MATTHEW BARZUN: Look, I think there is nothing better than we as diplomats can do and at the end of these sessions I always encourage them, the first question I ask them is how you been to the US and the second question I ask them is would you like  to go to live, work or study at some point in you career?  And I encourage that because if they can get there they can see what America is really like and learn that it’s not, despite all the very real problems that we talked about earlier it is a peaceful place and it’s a wonderful place with all the things they like about it really happening and the same is true of encouraging Americans to come on exchange programmes here.

DM: Let’s talk about the issue of immigration, a very live one of course in the United States and a very, very live on in the United Kingdom and that was a very diverse audience of young people you were talking to there, do they regard the United States as rather changing in terms of its welcoming attitude to immigrants?

MATTHEW BARZUN: Yes, that comes up usually, I mean the word immigration rarely comes up as a big one on either a frustration and then on the positive side it comes up around diversity and how we in the United States have taken this incredibly diverse – and it has become a cliché but I think a really powerful one and it’s true but we are a nation of immigrants.  It may have been a long time ago and it may have been from England, it may have been recently, it may have been from Mexico or somewhere else and we get real strength in our diversity so that’s something we get a chance to talk about.

DM: I’ve got to ask you while you’re with us, these developments in Yemen, an attempted rescue, we know US Special Forces involved in that, an attempted rescue of two hostages who were unfortunately killed in the incident, just tell us what more factually you can tell us about that.

MATTHEW BARZUN: Well I think it’s worth reflecting that our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and loved ones of those who were barbarically murdered in the rescue attempt.  I don't know what more I can factually add to the accounts that I’ve read …

DM: Well that US Special Forces were involved along with some of the Yemeni forces but were British Special Forces involved do you know?  

MATTHEW BARZUN: Well without getting into the details of that, not that I’ve read.  What I think it goes to show is that the US will work with partner countries to try to defeat these terrorist networks where they arrive to deny them a safe haven.  We have to keep doing that, we’ve been doing it for a long time, we have to do with American leadership but not just American, I think you saw that and now we’re working with the government of Yemen but you also see it in our fight against ISIL where we have over 60 countries signed up to this coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL.

DM: But in terms of the attitude towards hostages, you’re united with the United Kingdom in the fact that you will not, the United States government will not countenance paying any money to getting them freed?  It was complicated in this situation we understand because the South African hostage, we understand, who was killed in that, that there was some deal in the offing it was thought.

MATTHEW BARZUN: Yes we do, like the United Kingdom we have a long standing policy of saying – and look, we understand, it’s always worth saying that of course imagine yourself as your loved one, your son or daughter, husband or wife, in that situation, you would want to do anything or everything possible to do it but at the same time that ransom payment, and you’ve seen reports recently of £80 million, $125 million funding more kidnappings, more terrorist activities so our government policy is not to do that but what we do do is use our military, our intelligence, our diplomatic, all these other resources to try and bring our men and women home safely.

DM: While you’re with us, Mr Ambassador, the TTIP, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, it’s a big thing, it’s been discussed between the European Union and the United States.  Now many people here in the United Kingdom believe that ultimately if signed off could pose a threat to the National Health Service as you get big American companies coming in and through the force of law, the force of that agreement, part privatising the National Health Service.  

MATTHEW BARZUN: Yes, that will not happen, that is not what this deal is about at all so thank you for giving me a chance to talk about it.  It’s a big opportunity for Europe, for the United Kingdom and the United States to – already a third of world trade, nearly a half of world GDP – we both have high labour standards, high environmental standards, high consumer product safety. It’s not all the same in each country but they are high and we have a chance to join together and form a high standards agreement that can be not only great for supporting growing jobs in the UK, the EU and the United States but to set high standards for the rest of the world to plug into. This is a great opportunity, it’s right before us, we need to seize it and we need to not be distracted by these false claims that somehow this is trying to do something else because it’s not.   

DM: Okay, I’ve got other quick and last question, keying into your diplomatic expertise and it concerns the Elgin Marbles, one part of which has been loaned to the Hermitage from the British Museum and we know that the Greeks want those back.  This is a situation that involves the United States as well, not the Elgin Marbles but there are native American tribes looking for some of their artefacts to be given back by German museums.  Do you think the Elgin Marbles ultimately should go back to Greece?

MATTHEW BARZUN: I’m not going to weight into that one. I know it’s getting a lot of coverage here but I have no shortage of issues that as I talked with these young people we talked about, that one does not come up.  So I am not going to weigh into that one.   

DM: But there are parallel situations with the native American tribes as I say, there are several scalps in a museum in Germany and they have been saying these should come back to the United State.  

MATTHEW BARZUN: Sure and I think having a debate about these things is healthy and having peaceful vibrant debates on that issue and a whole sorts of other ones is really important and that’s again why I go out to these schools and say hey, what frustrates and concerns you about America, let’s talk about it.  

DM: Okay, and that’s why the supreme diplomat you are.  Ambassador, thank you very much indeed, very good to see you.