BBC World Service

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. I am delighted to know about her nocturnal habits; I will not share mine with noble Lords, but I do not have her stamina to carry on as late as she does. However, I have listened to the World Service, particularly when abroad, and found it useful on occasion to pick up and to follow. I will depart a little from her in terms of the concerns she has about new technologies, because I believe that perhaps there are opportunities here that we are not looking at sufficiently. However, the points she makes are very important and we should reflect on them.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for securing this debate and for his comments. He is truly one of the consciences of the House and constantly reminds us of things that we sometimes tuck away and do not think about enough—I am grateful to him for doing it again on this occasion. He is also tireless in pursuit of his pursuits but also gracious with us, which makes him very easy to work with.

I am looking forward to that maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and I hope that there will be many more of his speeches to come.

This is a debate which perhaps could have laid with the DCMS as the sponsoring department, but we are grateful to have the Minister from the FCDO responding. I am looking forward to his comments, and particularly to his take on the wording, which has carefully been put in front of him, on whether he is able to encourage the importance of the BBC World Service—I hope he will be able to do that—and whether he will reflect on the impact of the cuts, which is much in line with both previous speeches. How does he reconcile the FCDO position on this, and what will he do about that in terms of funding but also, more importantly, with regard to the constitutional issues raised by it?

On the money points, the point has been made, which I want to echo, that the World Service is funded mainly by the UK licence fee. The licence fee is of course a tax on the receipt of telecommunications, not a fund for the BBC. We need to remember that that is the way in which it is framed in the law and how it is actually used in practice—of course, that raises issues about non-payment. What is the Foreign Office’s position on that? We know that the BBC licence fee is under review; does it have a position, has it been made public, and, if so, could he share that with us? If, for example, he is minded towards a subscription view, does not that have quite serious consequences for the way in which the BBC is able to fund its World Service? A subscription will certainly reduce the amount of money available and would play to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his comment about why people who perhaps do not have any direct use for the World Service will be prepared to pay for that as it goes forward.

My second point about the way in which the funding currently operates is the question about grant in aid. The grant in aid from the Foreign Office, welcome though it is, is relatively small relative to the overall cost of the BBC and only a quarter of the current cost of the World Service. There is also a timing and a longevity point—this has been mentioned in relation to inflation, but it is wider than that. Can the Foreign Office do anything to try to align better the funding streams it is able to provide to the BBC and to link those to the licence fee settlement? After a lot of fuss and bother last time round, the Government, slightly unwillingly, agreed to work on a five-year basis for the BBC, so at least it has some longer visibility about where its funding is coming from, pace inflation, because working on a five-year or 10-year basis is a lot different from the rather uncertain way of doing this at each spending review. Spending reviews seem to come even more frequently than snowstorms, and we are not very long-sighted about this if we are going to wait only until the next time, when the next Chancellor or the next crisis curtails the previous plans. These are important matters.

Finally, on governance, it is important to note that the BBC is governed by royal charter. That used to be a very secure way of doing it but is rather less so following recent discussions in the last five years. The royal charter currently says that

“the BBC should provide high-quality news coverage to international audiences”.

So are we saying, if we are changing this, that we want to change the charter in this respect and make it on a fee-based basis? Are we really saying that or do we believe, as others have said, that the World Service is indeed

“perhaps Britain’s greatest gift to the world this century”?

We need to be certain about what it is we look for, and if we are happy with the current arrangements, the consequences of that are different constitutional arrangements and different financing. These are important matters which cannot be ducked.

Does the FCDO agree with the director-general’s changes? If it is merely funding a body that has full responsibility for its own actions, it should not have too much to say, despite what the licence agreement requires in terms of the BBC agreeing with the Foreign Secretary. What happens about going digital—does it have a view on that? These issues need to be taken into account as we go forward. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.