BBC World Service

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on securing this debate. I endorse his words and those of noble friends who have spoken before me. I agree with the majority of what has been said.

This debate gets to the heart of what we wish our international standing to be, and what it actually is. Cuts to the BBC World Service threaten to undermine the reach and quality of its reporting, to open the door to unsavoury competitors, and to reduce the influence of one of our most valuable institutions, which is a tremendous force for good and a source of soft power.

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister spoke about how

“our country has always looked out to the world.”

He set out his ambition for a foreign policy upholding freedom and openness, and a Britain engaging with the world from the Arctic to the Indo-Pacific. I admire and support his vision but it cannot be achieved without resources, nor is it consistent with further cuts to the World Service.

The last few years have been a reminder of the importance of the World Service. Information is more available than ever, and trustworthy information all too hard to find. Misinformation can be fatal for individuals, ethnic groups and societies, as we have seen in Myanmar during the ethnic cleansing operation against the Rohingya.

In this context, the World Service is crucial—for the Russian dissident, the Syrian refugee and the Afghan girl hoping to learn about the world. Its investigations have real world impact: a pioneering report by “Africa Eye” resulted in prison sentences for militias who massacred civilians. The efforts of autocracies to circumscribe the World Service and prevent its reporting are in themselves testament to its importance.

I know that my noble friend the Minister and his colleagues recognise the value of the World Service. This was reflected in the very welcome additional support they provided for journalism in Russia and Ukraine earlier this year. In a crisis you need the BBC, but if it is to be able to fulfil the crucial roles that they value it must have sufficient funding not just in a crisis but at all times, so that it can maintain and build the knowledge and skills which make it so important.

The World Service is already making cuts of £28.5 million by 2023. It will have to cut 382 jobs, as we have heard. These are cuts to expertise and experience. Local journalists, working in the language of the people they are reporting on, are an important source of knowledge for their colleagues in the BBC, for us in the United Kingdom and for audiences around the world. Once lost, knowledge and experience are not easily regained. I hope my noble friends in government will heed that point in relation to the rest of the FCDO’s work and partners as well.

How you deliver news also matters. According to the International Telecommunication Union, there are 5.3 billion internet users worldwide. That leaves 2.7 billion people offline—people for whom radio is often a crucial service and connection to the wider world. We must not leave them without access to reliable information. If future savings are required, which seems likely following the two-year freeze in the BBC’s licence fee income, without more funding from the FCDO it will be not just individual jobs at threat but entire language services.

The World Service does offer value and not just in what it provides; its value is compounded by what replaces it. We can see this clearly in the western Balkans. The BBC closed down the last of its local language services in the region in 2011. I welcome the fact that it re-established a Serbian service recently, but in its absence other international “news” services have been able to flourish. Sputnik and Russia Today have a significant malign presence. Sputnik’s Serbian-language reports are provided free to local media, working closely with Russia’s proxies to spread Russian propaganda and undermine liberal democratic values and aspirations for Euro-Atlantic integration. The news as told by Sputnik portrays NATO as a threat and Russia always as a friend. Divisions are emphasised and exacerbated. The results can be found in polling which shows that Russia is seen as a strong and reliable ally and that the Kremlin’s narrative around Ukraine is widely believed.

This is why the BBC matters. Its reporting shapes global understanding of the most important issues that affect us and with which we grapple. The integrity of the World Service reflects on Britain, benefiting our trade, cultural reach and reputation. It is also an exemplar of soft power in undermining those who would rather that the truth does not come out.

I recognise that we live in difficult financial times but, as with all our overcut spending on diplomacy, these are very small sums in the Treasury’s accounts. For a marginal saving, we undermine a key institution. Even as we aspire in our rhetoric to be outward looking, our actions tell a different story.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness, but we are some way over time and we are pretty tight on timings for this debate. I urge her to immediately conclude her remarks.

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

We hope to be a global nation. We cannot be global without a global voice.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

Clause 13 agreed.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I hope we can make slightly faster progress on the Bill after dinner, having completed only two groups so far.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.18 pm.

Queen’s Speech

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

The Queen’s Speech said that we

“will lead the way in championing security around the world.”

In “Yes Minister”, the Permanent Secretary would have said, “Very bold, Minister”. It is quite a bold assertion. We used to be good at understatement. Conservative Foreign Secretaries such as Alec Douglas-Home, Peter Carrington, Geoffrey Howe and Douglas Hurd tended to speak rather softly, although they still carried quite a big stick. They tended to get their way. The stick is now a little smaller, as the noble Baroness, Lady Davidson, convincingly reminded us, but we seem to be shouting rather loudly and not getting our way quite so often.

I want us to be trusted. Trust is quite a good thing to have. I want people to believe that, if they conclude a deal with us, that deal is likely to stick. This makes it easier to conclude a deal. I would like people to think it unthinkable that we would break a treaty commitment and start a trade war. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Frost—I am sorry he is not here to hear it—that this House still champions the rule of law. I think we showed that during the passage of the then internal market Bill and, if we have to, we will show it again in connection with a Brexit Bill.

The Queen’s Speech does not say anything at all about development; the noble Lord, Lord Collins, was absolutely right to pick that up. The slick brochure published by the Foreign Office this week is unconvincing and alarming. It is alarming because it is clear that we are switching aid away from multilateral to bilateral, back to more tied aid. We will give less support to the international agencies fighting the causes of global insecurity, such as famine, disease, unrest and mass migration. Three out of every four cross-channel migrants and refugees come from a country fighting severe famine right now, but it seems from the Foreign Office publication that we plan to cut back on what we do to stem the flow at source—although, of course, the Queen’s Speech said that we will be hard on refugees. Apart from the moral imperative, is it not in our self-interest to do more, not less, through the multilateral agencies?

The noble Lord, Lord King, was absolutely right—as he usually is—in pointing to the imminence of the global famine. It is here already, but it is going to get much worse. Before Putin’s invasion, 80% of Egypt’s wheat came from the Black Sea; 75% of Sudan’s; 75% of Lebanon’s; 50% of Libya’s; and 50% of Tunisia’s. Global stocks were already at their lowest for seven years. The World Food Programme was already telling us that we were facing an unprecedented global hunger crisis before Putin’s invasion. As the noble Lord, Lord King, pointed out, protectionism in India and Indonesia —export bans—means that it is not just wheat that will be in very short supply in the Middle East. There are 9 million people in Tigray who are starving right now. The WFP says that there will be 20 million in Sudan within three months.

Should we not be urgently doing more, not less, for the WFP, the FAO, the UNDP, the UNHCR and the WHO? The WHO says that Covid has already killed 6 million and is still killing 1,000 a day. Those are probably underestimates, because the statistics are patchy. Some 75% of us are fully vaccinated, but only 23% are in Uganda, 19% in Ghana, 6% in Tanzania and 5% in Malawi. These disparities shame and threaten us. Do we not owe it to our Commonwealth friends and to ourselves to do more to help them do better?

It is not just them. In tragic, war-torn, blockaded Yemen, only 1% of the population has been vaccinated at all. Are we using our undoubted influence in Riyadh to persuade the Saudis that lives must be saved in the Yemen? I hope so, but I do not know.

The key global responder is the WHO. Some 80% of its finance comes from voluntary national contributions. Are we up there as global leaders showing the way? No, we are way down the pack. Up at the top are Germany and Japan; we are down with New Zealand. Global Australia contributes more than global Britain; the Gates Foundation contributes more than global Britain. Should we not put that right? It is a global pandemic and, if we aspire to be champions of global security and lead the way, should we not be doing something about global insecurity and its root causes?

My last point harkens back to my first. When working in Washington and Brussels, I was lucky enough to witness a virtuous circle: the more the White House trusted us, particularly because of our policies on Northern Ireland through John Major and Tony Blair, the more our perceived influence in Washington strengthened our hand in Brussels—and the more we were seen to deliver on common purposes with our friends in Europe, the more the White House listened to us. I worry about the very real risk of a vicious circle, which works the other way. Picking fights with the 27, particularly over Northern Ireland, is the best way of losing friends in Washington. The more we drift away from both Europe and America—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, it is a very long last point and I do urge the noble Lord to conclude.

Shireen Abu Aqla

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, we have time for just two more so we will take a Lib Dem first.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister did not quite answer the question of whether he thought it feasible and valuable to have a joint investigation. The bullet is clearly an essential piece of evidence. He talks about an impartial investigation; does he believe it should be a joint one?

Iran Nuclear Deal

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I regret that the time for Back-Bench questions is up.