Government Departments: Soft Power

Baroness Bakewell Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell]

My Lords, I welcome this debate on soft power, proposed by my noble friend Lady Taylor, for the very reason that it gives me the chance to engage in a debate that I think will express a groundswell of support for what the noble Lord has just been saying about the World Service. After a career in broadcasting of 40 years, it is obvious that this is close to my heart and that developments in this area give me great cause for alarm.

The BBC World Service is indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, says, a global brand, up there with Coca-Cola and Microsoft as one of the major forces that influence the lives of people across the world. It is a brand that is the envy of every other broadcasting institution. Coca-Cola is a pleasure and Microsoft is a technology, but the World Service is more than both. It is of course a technology, but it is overall an idea and one that is among the most precious and vulnerable in the world today—the idea of truth, as embodied every day in the meticulous, thoughtful and impartial news created by highly respected and trained journalists. Peter Horrocks, its current managing director, when he was speaking to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the other House, called it,

“the most significant, most reputable international news organisation in the world”—

but, he went on, “it is being damaged”. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Except that he is not alone. Voices have been raised from all corners of the globe; Ban Ki-Moon is just one of those to deplore what is happening.

This damage is not accidental. It is the outcome of the deal struck by the Government and the BBC during last year’s spending review, and that deal does neither of them credit. In return for a licence fee settlement until 2016, the BBC is to take over the funding of the World Service in 2014, but with no guarantee that it will ring-fence that funding. Meanwhile, instant cuts to the BBC’s funding require savings of £46 million a year. In January, the blow fell: as we have already heard, five language services, short-wave transmissions to China and Russia and a quarter of staff were cut. Is this the wisest way for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to share its load of the Government’s cuts? Is this compatible with the need for this country to have thoughtful and accurate influence around the world? While doubt hovers around the scale and impact of our hard power—the military—the power of the word, at which we excel, should rather be strengthened and endorsed.

Instead, the BBC’s cuts to its language services mean that it will lose, as we have heard, 30 million listeners across the world. It is hard to imagine 30 million, so let me give some leverage on that scale. Earlier this week, John Sullivan died. He was the playwright who created “Only Fools and Horses”, which was acclaimed in his obituaries as perhaps the most popular sitcom of all time. What is more, the obituary declared that its audiences regularly reached 20 million. In domestic terms, 20 million was considered extravagantly successful, yet the BBC is about to drop 30 million listeners—half as many again—from its non-domestic audience. In losing its Hindi service, the BBC will save a mere £680,000 annually and lose an audience of 11 million.

Various explanations are offered for these choices; none of them appears appropriate or convincing. The first is that everyone must take their share of the hurt of the cuts—everyone is suffering. However, is it not out of proportion for such a prestigious and valuable institution to lose 20 per cent of its funding and a quarter of its staff, with the consequent damage to British standing across the world? In his evidence to the Select Committee, Sir John Tusa, who was managing director of the World Service from 1986 to 1992, called for a,

“serious examination of the impact of these reductions on an important part of the UK’s international voice”.

Part of that examination must focus on the criticism that the world has moved on and that the World Service is somehow out of date in the context of global media—that digital technologies with their 24-hour rolling news, the rapid spread of social networks and the availability of mobile phones render the quiet and exact appraisal of the facts out of date. When was the truth ever out of date? This point of view is one seen strictly through western eyes.

Most people across the globe still receive the World Service through short-wave transmissions. In the poorest places, among the poorest people, ill served by internet reach, the World Service is prized. In places such as China and Russia, where powerful Governments seek to block information, the World Service has the potential to be ever more important. Access to short-wave radio is relatively risk-free in these countries, whereas access to the internet is not. We should not downplay our transmissions to such countries. The worldwide supporters of China’s dissident artist, Ai Weiwei, and Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi look to the BBC’s international reach to reach them wherever they are with truthful, unbiased reporting.

Our other focus must be on the timelines of history. It is tempting in the short term—we have already heard examples—to see that economies could be made to the parts of the World Service that are directed at settled parts of the globe, and that money saved to bulwark services wherever there is trouble already or wherever there is perceived to be latent trouble. The BBC is alert to such strategies, as we have just heard. However, it is unwise to be sure how the future will play out. Who could have predicted the Arab spring? Who knows where it will be next? The standing of Britain, as sustained by the World Service, depends on something more than episodic shifts and retreats in world politics. It depends on a constant broadcasting presence and a reputation as an international broadcaster of steady, reliable news and information, whose probity is beyond doubt and whose serious reporting and analysis can always be heard everywhere.

In this day and age you simply could not invent the World Service; imagine the struggle to finance it, define and agree on its impartiality and embark on its network of agreements. It is perhaps no surprise that the excellent Arabic language channel, Al-Jazeera, founded in 1996, was founded by ex-World Service employees. The World Service is already here, established at a time when such things were possible and when the BBC could proudly boast a coat of arms that declared, “Nation shall speak peace unto nation”. It is here, and in terms of British influence in the world it gives outstanding value for money. It is here for us to support, defend and fund. Surely it would be appropriate for there to be a small transfer of funds from the Department for International Development, whose own budget will increase by 37 per cent to £11 billion. In keeping up a free flow of information to millions of people, the BBC World Service contributes to the very objectives of DfID.

I am heartened by a recent window of opportunity in that an outstanding Member of this House has been appointed chairman of the BBC Trust. Will the Minister reassure us that we can look forward to the serious reconsideration of these matters, for which I now call?