BBC Monitoring Service

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Just over four decades ago, I first became aware of the BBC Monitoring service, or BBCM. The year was 1982, and a very different Labour party, led by veteran unilateralist Michael Foot, was committed to abandoning the British strategic nuclear deterrent unconditionally. I was involved in a campaign against that, together with the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), and a brilliant colleague of ours, Councillor—as he then was—Tony Kerpel.

A fellow researcher handed me the transcript of a Radio Moscow interview with the national organiser of Britain’s leading disarmament campaign group, who was visiting the USSR, as one does. When asked why the official Soviet Peace Committee supported the Soviet Government—unlike her organisation, which opposed the UK Government—she revealingly replied:

“Well, obviously, because the Soviet Government is in favour of peace, and this makes a big difference.”

That was on Radio Moscow on 7 June 1982, for the historians among us.

The source of such telling material was a publication called Summary of World Broadcasts, which was produced by BBCM and packed with invaluable insights into the propaganda campaigns of our adversaries and those who consorted with them. Founded in 1939 to give speedy access to foreign media and propaganda output, the monitoring service was funded for its first 70 years by an annual Government grant. This was as it should be: the Government were paying for a service for which they were the main customer and consumer.

Certainly, there were periods of famine and feast. Reductions in the grant after the end of the second world war limited the frequency of the Summary of World Broadcasts, which resumed daily publication only in 1959, but the principle of the annual grant held firm and there was further Government investment in computerisation and new buildings at the Caversham Park headquarters of BBCM in the second half of the 1980s. For a time, the grant was split between the Foreign Office, the Defence Ministry, the Cabinet Office and the World Service budgets, but a 2005 report reinstated the single Government revenue stream. Cuts and redundancies nevertheless took place in 2006-07 under Tony Blair, with worse to follow under Cameron and Clegg in 2010.

That was the year when the coalition Government decreed that the BBC World Service, and the Monitoring service too, would be funded in future from the corporation’s licence fee income. Eventually, direct Government funding for the World Service had to be restored, amounting to about one third of its annual income. BBCM, however, remains disproportionately dependent on the licence fee, plus a certain amount of income from its commercial contracts. Given that the BBC claims to have seen a 30% reduction of its overall income in real terms since that fateful year of 2010, it is hardly surprising that both the World Service and BBCM have suffered financially.

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

Would the right hon. Member agree that in a world where autocracies are in the ascendency and false news spreads like the speed of light, Government funding for services that bring truth to the world has never been more important?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I could not agree more. May I take the opportunity to thank the hon. Gentleman again for the excellent debate on the BBC World Service, which he led on 26 June, if I remember correctly, and which gave me the idea to bring forward the subject of BBC Monitoring separately?

Over very many years, BBC Monitoring had built up the closest conceivable relationship with its United States counterpart, known as Open Source Enterprise, or OSE. Indeed, the two organisations were based on alternate floors of the Caversham Park headquarters, dividing between them the coverage of global broadcasting to the enormous benefit of both countries in the transatlantic alliance. This was the nerve centre of world-beating open source intelligence, yet the BBC decided to evict OSE and sell the Caversham estate.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making such an excellent speech. Caversham Park sits in my constituency, and it was a wonderful facility. I pay tribute to those who worked there over many years, breaking vital news stories and providing information to the Foreign Office, such as the initial news reports of the Iranian revolution in 1979 and many other similar events that were only able to be recorded because of the amazing talents of the linguists and journalists based at the facility, which has sadly now been mothballed and is due to be sold to a developer. Would the right hon. Member like to comment on the role of those staff?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am extremely grateful for that intervention. I am sure that the staff of BBC Monitoring, both present and past, will be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the support that he has rightly expressed for them.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate to the House. I conducted my PhD research at the BBC national archives centre, which was within Caversham Park, and every lunch time I would have lunch with the extraordinary linguists who occupied the building that the hon. Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) has just described. The loss of BBC Monitoring—if that were indeed to come about—would be a considerable national loss. It represents an incredibly important part of not only our security past but our security future—for the reasons that have been mentioned previously, such as the rise of disinformation. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we need to preserve these institutions, because so often we do not know what we have got until it is gone?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Yes, indeed. If ever something encapsulated the concept of soft power, and indeed buttressed and underpinned some of the agencies that have to delve from more secret sources for information, this is an example of that.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

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[Sir Julian Lewis]

I must say it is gratifying in an end-of-day Adjournment debate on a Thursday early evening to have so many people so keen to intervene, including the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince).

[Chris Vince]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for letting me intervene and for his wonderful introduction to my intervention. He mentioned the importance of soft power, which we spoke a great deal about in the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley). Does he agree that it is not only a case of not knowing what we have got until it is gone, but that, if we were to lose the BBC Monitoring service as well as the BBC World Service—not that we are suggesting that, of course—it would be very difficult to get it back, having realised the error we had made? On the BBC World Service, I will mention the conversation that he and I had in that debate about how, when the service was pulled out of particular countries, it was sometimes replaced with the propaganda that we are trying to avoid.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Absolutely. The only good thing to be said about the propaganda of one’s adversaries is that sometimes, unwittingly, it gives us an insight into their plans and a forewarning of their evil intent. Let us ensure that we preserve the crown jewels and that we do not rely simply on fluctuations in licence fee income for that necessary task.

I have said that the Caversham estate was to be sold off, despite the amazing integration that existed there with the American counterpart of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which is now known more regularly as the OSE. It was therefore no wonder that the Defence Committee decided to entitle its December 2016 report “Open Source Stupidity: The Threat to the BBC Monitoring Service”. That was a pun on open source intelligence—and for those interested, it is HC 748, and it is still in print.

The then Defence Committee Chairman, whom modesty prevents me from identifying, pointed out—this is a long quote, but it is worthwhile—that:

“The Coalition Government was warned, in the strongest possible terms, not to leave the BBC Monitoring service unprotected by ending its ring–fenced annual grant and transferring this minor financial burden to the licence–fee payer. By doing so, it gave the BBC a free hand to inflict successive rounds of cuts, now culminating in the loss of the specialised and dedicated Caversham headquarters.

The vast increase in open source information in the recent past makes it one of the few tools still left in the Government’s arsenal which can provide almost real time information and analysis on global developments. To allow the BBC to change and shape it in a different direction is in contravention of UK national interest. It is especially bewildering when you consider the annual cost of BBC Monitoring is around £25 million.

The decision to evict BBC Monitoring’s US counterpart—Open Source Enterprise—from its UK base at Caversham Park and break the physical link between the two is short–sighted. The BBC’s strategy for BBC Monitoring will downgrade our contribution to open source intelligence sharing between the UK and the US at a time when European nations must demonstrate to President–elect Trump”—

as he then was, for the first time—

“that we are committed to paying our way in the fields of defence and security. As one of our witnesses said, ‘this is the height of folly’.”

That was a long quote, but it was true then and it is true today.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

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[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger).

[Alex Ballinger]

The right hon. Member is delivering an excellent speech. As the Defence Committee did in 2016, the Foreign Affairs Committee is now conducting an inquiry into disinformation, which covers many of the same areas that he discusses. Does he agree that the increasing spread of disinformation, increasingly in countries that are non-English-speaking but have a real geopolitical significance for the UK, makes the BBC Monitoring service even more important today than it was in 2016?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I agree entirely, and before I give way for the next intervention, I will read what I had just been about to say.

The report’s main conclusion was that the Government should reinstate their previous model of funding BBC Monitoring through a ringfenced grant in aid, rather than allowing the funding to come from the licence fee. As a non-partisan, cross-party body, I doubt if today’s Defence Committee would take a radically different view. Indeed, we have just heard from the Foreign Affairs Committee representative that that view still has a great deal of validity.

[Adam Jogee]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, even if he chose my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) before me. I wish to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the report, which I have in front of me. I note that only three colleagues who were on the Committee in 2016 are still in this House. The fact that he makes these points now, as he did almost 10 years ago, speaks to the challenge we face, as well as to the threats to our ability to tackle the geopolitical challenges to which he has referred and how we will be found wanting in that effort if we do not get this right, and get it right soon.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

It is very gratifying to an old timer like me to see a fresh generation of serious-minded hon. and right hon. Members from all parties so united on this common theme in the national interest. I will have to race on a bit now so as not to cut into the Minister’s time too much.

So far I have focused in large part on the negatives, as the House has heard, but all is not a picture of doom and gloom. Despite the substantial redundancies of 2016-17 after the reduction in licence fee funding and the closure of Caversham Park, an 11-year customer service agreement was signed with the Government, covering the period 2017 to 2027 inclusive. A business development team also succeeded in widening the commercial customer base and lessening, to some extent, the dependence on the licence fee.

Those in charge at BBC Monitoring are in no doubt of the importance of their mission. They point out in a most helpful briefing document that they provided to me that in today’s environment of intensifying information warfare, weaponised narratives and global instability, the value of BBC Monitoring’s work is more crucial than ever. They note:

“The global media landscape has undergone a profound transformation, driven by the rapid expansion of social media, the democratisation of content creation, and the accelerating capabilities of generative AI. These shifts have dramatically increased the volume and velocity of disinformation… In response, BBC Monitoring has evolved its editorial strategy, moving beyond translation and summarisation to deliver expert, evidence-based analysis. The introduction of data specialists has enabled the production of interactive maps, graphics, and other tools that help users navigate complex information environments.”

BBCM has expanded its coverage of Chinese, Russian and Iranian media influence operations, of jihadism, of climate change, of water and energy security, and of migration—all issues that are central to our national interests and foreign policy. Its products underpin the work of BBC journalism, particularly when reporting on countries where direct access is restricted or prohibited.

There is, in short, no question about the irreplaceable value inherent in the BBC Monitoring service. By securing this debate and sharing the contents of this speech in advance with the Minister, as I have, I aim to give the Government an opportunity to endorse its vital work tonight and perhaps shine a little light on some relevant aspects of that.

First, on its budget, at the time of the December 2016 Defence Committee report, the annual costs of BBCM were known, as I said earlier, to be a modest £25 million. What is its budget today, and what percentages of its income derive from the licence fee and from each of its other main funding sources? If the Minister cannot be too specific this evening, I would be grateful if he might write to me in more detail.

Secondly, now that the US Open Source Enterprise organisation is—most regrettably—no longer co-located with BBC Monitoring in the United Kingdom, what is the nature of the residual relationship between the two organisations? Do they no longer together cover the globe, freely exchanging their respective products, as in the days of Caversham Park? Does BBCM even see the OSE product? Does it have to pay for it and, if so, how much income does BBC Monitoring receive for supplying its output to the United States?

Thirdly, I understand that BBCM has taken some strides in introducing artificial intelligence into its modus operandi. How far does it expect that process to go, and will human expertise and judgment remain integral to its monitoring work?

Fourthly, while the restoration of an annual Government grant would be by far the most secure funding model, in the absence of that, is there any danger of BBC Monitoring being cut loose from the World Service organisation and farmed out insecurely to BBC Sounds, as has previously been mooted?

Finally, with a new agreement having to be negotiated with the Government before the expiry of the existing one in two years’ time, will the Minister please undertake to set out specific details of the target quantities of actual monitoring outputs—not to be conflated with analysis—specified under the existing agreement, and the extent to which those targets have, or have not, been achieved? Only in that way shall we know if our vital open source intelligence operation truly has the resources it needs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am very grateful for the work that my hon. Friend continues to do on her Select Committee to champion the cause of people across the world who are suffering. She will be pleased that climate remains a priority, notwithstanding the changes that we have had to make in our development spend. We recognise that climate often drives migration routes, so our very important upstream work has to continue.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Given communist China’s predictable support for the killer in the Kremlin’s campaign of murder and mayhem in Ukraine, why are the Government rewarding China with a super-embassy in London?

[Mr Lammy]

There is no reward. The right hon. Gentleman will recognise that this is a quasi-judicial process that must be approached properly. Under the Geneva convention, all countries are entitled to an embassy.

Middle East

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Like the Secretary of State, I have supported a two-state solution for very many years, but there is a slight contradiction when he says that immediate recognition would not be rewarding Hamas because Hamas would be disarmed and a new state would be demilitarised. Is he saying that the recognition will not go ahead unless and until Hamas is disarmed? If the recognition will go ahead before Hamas is disarmed, should it not be confined to those parts of Palestine that are currently represented by the Palestinian Authority?

[Mr Lammy]

I remind the right hon. Gentleman of the letter that President Abbas wrote to President Macron, where he was clear for the first time that there can be no role for Hamas. We will make the assessment on recognition in the coming weeks, but clearly the E1 settlement has moved the dial even further away from where we were a few weeks ago. Recognition is a process.

Middle East

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the vision that she paints, and I associate myself with the remarks she makes in relation to children, particularly about starvation and the situation that they face. Of course we are working closely with the UN system. I spoke to Tom Fletcher at the beginning of last week to get the latest on the aid situation, and we will continue to work with him.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Foreign Secretary states that he believes in a two-state solution—as I have done since at least the 1973 Yom Kippur war—but that Hamas must not be a part of it. Does he agree that the best chance there ever was for the two-state solution was when Israel withdrew in 2005 from the Gaza strip? Hamas was elected in January 2006 and has been in power there ever since and is still managing to hang on. Does he accept that if ever the Government did recognise a Palestinian state, it would have to be the west bank without the Gaza strip, given the internecine slaughter between Hamas on the one hand and the Palestine Liberation Organisation on the other that followed the last withdrawal?

[Mr Lammy]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that Hamas cannot continue to govern in Gaza, and I suspect that everyone in this Chamber agrees with that. I do believe that there are prospects beyond that. Indeed, the IRA laid down its arms, and that is a template for how to demilitarise and how leaders in this circumstance can perhaps exit Gaza. However, the continued undermining of the Palestinian Authority by the Israeli Government, including the starvation of funds, is an attempt not to get to a two-state solution which all of us in this House want to see.

Sudan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend knows of what she speaks, with her role before she came to this place. I shall take that as an action from today’s dialogue.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will the Minister explain to the House what, in practical terms, the Security Council could do, even if all its members were neutral on the question of backing one side over the other? If two sides are determined to fight one another and neither is dependent on outside military assistance to pursue the conflict, is there anything practical that the Security Council could do, even if it was united and in agreement on the need for an intervention?

[Catherine West]

The UN Security Council is not just about military intervention, in terms of the security; as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, it is also about the impact of the diplomatic solutions. As the penholder, the UK has the most important role to try to bring everybody together around the table, which is why we had the London Sudan conference. There were some who threw their hands up and said, “We haven’t achieved anything,” but I think the important thing was that we laid down a marker, and that we are now following up with other partners and being seen as leaders in the area. It is by using the UN Security Council leadership role that we will eventually get to a solution. However, the right hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that there are a lot of fingers in the pie.

Actions of Iranian Regime: UK Response

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

With the greatest of respect to my predecessor, he will know that the Defence Secretary and the Attorney General do rather different roles. I do not think they are in disagreement, and in any case, collective responsibility would bind them both, and indeed me.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I help the Minister share a little information with the House by asking him whether the Government know of any purpose for refining uranium-235 to 60% purity other than to build a nuclear weapon?

[Mr Falconer]

I am happy to be clear that that level of enrichment has no obvious civilian purpose. We are told that it was for research and development, but I think many observers have drawn exactly the same conclusion as the right hon. Gentleman.

BBC World Service Funding

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Jeremy, for calling me to speak, and it is a pleasure to endorse so much of what has been said today in such a unified way across party boundaries.

The value of BBC broadcasting is to be measured by the risks that people are prepared to take in order to listen to it, ranging from people in occupied countries to people in totalitarian states. From occupied France in the second world war to oppressed Afghanistan today, the BBC World Service is many people’s principal lifeline to the truth. Indeed, its current reach in Afghanistan is believed to be almost a quarter of the entire population. As we have heard today, it reaches well over 400 million people worldwide, including 64 million people every week in the world’s 20 most fragile states. No political estimate can be put on this reach other than its colossal impact for good.

However, resources have not kept pace and we see the consequences in places such as Lebanon, where the Russian Sputnik radio channel now transmits on the radio frequency that was formerly used in that country by BBC Arabic, which had to be closed down after 85 years, early in 2023. By the end of that year, a Russian radio channel had taken over in Lebanon.

Indeed, Russia and China are estimated to be investing between £6 billion and £8 billion in media services across Africa, Asia and the middle east. As we have heard, deplorably, the US Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, as well as funding Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting networks, has suffered huge cuts in funding and personnel. Normally, that overarching system of broadcasting by the USA would reach an estimated 427 million people. Are the gaps that will be created by these cuts going to be filled, once again, by countries hostile to western values? It goes without saying that Russia and China are both absolutely delighted with that development in the USA.

As we have also heard, two thirds of the World Service continues to be funded by the licence fee, yet it is primarily a service that benefits the interests of the Government and the nation as a whole, rather than the people who pay the licence fee being the consumers of the service. By definition, their listening in is a bonus; the World Service is meant to promote values and truth overseas.

Because of the three-minute limit for speeches, I will not be able to refer to BBC Monitoring, as I had hoped to, but it is another vital service. Both the World Service and BBC Monitoring used to be paid for by the Government. If the Government decide to pay for them in full again, they can at least put the money required towards the extra contribution of 1.5% of GDP on NATO spending, to reach a target of 5% of GDP, which they have now agreed to accept.

China Audit

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that. May I also name-check the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) on this issue? The issue is under consideration, and we have been discussing with communities these very important pension issues.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In his statement, the Foreign Secretary says that

“our approach will always be guided by the UK’s long-term economic growth priorities”.

As an example of that, he refers to our universities’ second largest source of international students being China, yet the Intelligence and Security Committee stated in the press notice for its report on China, of which he approves:

“China is similarly aggressive in its interference activities… China oversteps the boundary. It has been particularly effective at using its money and influence to penetrate or buy Academia in order to ensure its international narrative is advanced and criticism suppressed.”

In answer to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), he said that we look to the universities to take precautions. Given the financial incentive to universities, I would rather look to someone else to take the precautions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

I recognise the appetite in the Chamber to hear more about the ICJ advisory opinion. It was a far-reaching and complex judgment, and we are taking our time with our response.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

What practical steps can the Government take to support women and girls in Afghanistan who, after a period of being encouraged to liberate themselves, are now cast back into domestic servitude?

[Mr Falconer]

This is an incredibly important question. As I think some in the House know, I negotiated with the Taliban when I was an official. It is a source of incredible personal frustration to me that the situation in Afghanistan for women has got worse and worse as the months have drawn on. The Taliban need to change course, not just on the rights of women, but for the viability of their economy and their country.

Middle East

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is right that the Iranian regime is the world’s worst sponsor of state terrorism and state threats. We have three individuals who were arrested under the National Security Act 2023 moving through our judicial system. I want to reassure those in the Jewish community in our country that we take those threats very seriously, and I and the Home Secretary will do all we can to keep them, their buildings, their institutions and their families safe.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As usual, I agree with much of what the Foreign Secretary has to say, but I have to ask him this: how many times must a terrorist-funding, fanatical regime threaten to wipe another country from the face of the earth before a Government advised by Lord Hermer of Chagos acknowledge that military action to delay and degrade its nuclear weapons programme is both ethically and legally justifiable?

[Mr Lammy]

I simply say to the right hon. Gentleman, with all respect, that there is a convention in our country about the very important role that Attorneys General play in our Government. They are able to give the Government advice when asked for it; that happens under all Governments. I do not really recognise the caricature that I have heard or some of the reports. I want to make it crystal clear that we were not involved in this action and therefore some of what is being said is wholly beyond the pale.