Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Funding

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on securing this debate and the admirable way in which he introduced it.

I want to talk about something related. In last year’s strategic defence and security review, the Government decided to place greater emphasis on soft power as part of their national security strategy. The decision to bring the funding of the BBC World Service back into the remit of the Foreign Office, with a budget of £85 million each year by 2017-18, was therefore widely welcomed.

I know that many noble Lords will recall their past dependence on the often crackly and faint yet measured tones of the BBC World Service shortwave reception. Calmly, it brought reliable news and comment to the remote and sometimes unstable locations to which noble Lords’ employment had taken them. Currently reaching 308 million people worldwide, and with a goal to reach 500 million by 2022, the BBC World Service has established an envious reputation for delivering trusted, impartial news. Plans for investing here, where a global gap has never been wider, will be very welcome, particularly in Africa, where audience figures outstrip all other areas of the world.

During previous rounds of spending cuts, replacing the extensive World Service network of shortwave radio transmitters with cheaper, local, city-based FM stations seemed like a good wheeze. The problem was, and is, that these FM stations are particularly vulnerable to political interference and closure when countries become unstable. Closure of FM stations compromises the delivery of the BBC’s flagship: trusted and impartial news. In Answers to Written Questions, the Government have told me that forced closures of FM stations have occurred in numerous African countries, including Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda—perhaps not surprisingly —but also, I believe, in Nigeria. Nevertheless, while audiences have switched from shortwave to FM, the total audience across all platforms in sub-Saharan Africa has risen from some 53 million to 82 million over the past 10 years.

Here lies the challenge to increasing the BBC World Service’s audience from 308 million to the target of 500 million by 2022: half the world’s population is under 35. The BBC’s future plans need to target aspiring youth overseas. The rise in TV audiences will continue to outstrip radio; digital platforms will continue to expand; and, particularly in Africa, mobile phone technology will challenge other news-delivery media. For the BBC World Service to keep pace and to be ahead of the curve in the future, there has to be some certainty now in funding streams beyond 2018.