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BBC World Service

My Lords, I say straight away that I heartily endorse many of the sentiments expressed by the noble Baroness about the BBC World Service. This is indeed a precious asset and, as the Statement of my right honourable friend says, we wish it to be an articulate and highly effective voice for Britain in the world. There is no disagreement about that. The noble Baroness first asked about the size of the cut of 16 per cent in real terms over three years and asked why it is, or appears to be, larger than the overall real-terms cut in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a whole during the period of the spending review. It is not the biggest cut—the British Council has been asked to take a 25 per cent cut in real terms—but it is larger than the 10 per cent because we have to start from the position we inherited. The noble Baroness will recall that the Foreign Office took a fearful blow when the mess over the exchange rate had to be negotiated, which involved a large cut in its overall budget. At that time, the cut imposed on other ancillary bodies, including the BBC World Service, was somewhat less. If one looks at the arithmetic, all that is happening is that having to suffer 16 per cent now, which no one welcomes but is the reality that we have to face, merely brings the BBC World Service back to the same proportion of expenditure of a total FCO budget as was the position in 2008. We are back where we are. Of course, it would be nice to be much further ahead and to have more resources, but we do not have more resources. The outgoing Minister—I forget his name—left a letter behind saying, ““There is no more money””. We have had to impose on ourselves and in many parts of government inevitable cuts. Not this evening are we going to go into an argument about why those cuts were imposed or why the situation in budget terms was so utterly disastrous, which I know is a huge debate going on in this country. But disastrous it was and repaired it has to be. As to specific services that were mentioned, five language services have been stopped, which my right honourable friend has outlined. On top of those, there are the effects of the changes in a number of other areas. The noble Baroness mentioned Turkey, for which there will be a stopping of radio programming and a concentration on online, mobile and TV distribution in a number of languages, and a phased reduction in medium and short-wave radio distribution. That tells us something very important, which I am not sure that the noble Baroness or some other critics fully appreciate. We are dealing with a rapidly changing technology. The short-wave arrangements are not reaching the audiences. Short-wave is being cut out by the development of the technology, and by resistance in some parts of the world. In addition, millions of people are moving to online reception of news and views. They are using mobiles and television as well. This is changing the whole pattern of radio broadcasting across the planet. Quite aside from these substantial economies, which cannot be denied, there has to be an evolution of the technology and the changes in the BBC World Service. If that is not understood, I am afraid that very little is understood about the world into which we are moving. Of course these are not the sort of things one wants to welcome—there are difficulties, there are challenges and this is the greatest matter for regret, redundancies. However, one has to also accept that we have to move on in the evolution of the World Service. In three years’ time it is going to be in a much better position, completely independent of my department or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and therefore reasserting its wonderful independence in the world in its voice and its opinions. This is something for the future which I think deserves some optimism rather than the concentration on what the noble Baroness calls ““huge and savage cuts””. I believe these are overused as adjectives.