BBC Monitoring Service Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Al Pinkerton
Main Page: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)Department Debates - View all Al Pinkerton's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(3 days, 14 hours ago)
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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.