BBC: Royal Charter

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The BBC has a licence remit and there are quotas for the number of hours of current affairs and news programming that it must show. What it fills its channels with outside of that is, rightly, a matter not for Ministers but for the BBC itself to decide.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, before any funding formula is introduced for the BBC, will the Minister commit to commissioning an independent, separate and dedicated impact assessment of that funding formula’s impact on the World Service, which needs a great deal of budgetary resilience built into it so that it can continue to respond flexibly to geopolitical situations around the world, especially through its language services?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Government have made it clear—I am happy to say it again—that continued investment in the World Service is necessary to reflect the UK, its culture and its values to the rest of the world. Last March, we announced a £20 million uplift for the BBC World Service over the next two years, on top of the £94 million that it gets annually, to protect all 42 World Service language services, to support English language broadcasting and to counter disinformation. I agree with the noble Baroness about the importance of doing that in the world situation we face.