BBC World Service

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Fowler]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for the BBC World Service.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)]

My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has described as essential the role of the BBC World Service in helping to deliver an ambitious foreign policy agenda. We continue to respect its complete editorial independence, and it is of course respected worldwide for its balanced and well informed programmes. The BBC World Service is funded through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office through grant in aid. In line with the rest of Whitehall, we face budget pressures and are carefully scrutinising all expenditure. The BBC World Service is not exempt from that ongoing process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fowler]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Will he also remember some other words of the now Foreign Secretary last year:

“Britain will be safer if our values are strongly upheld and widely respected in the world”?

The World Service has an audience of 180 million people a week across the globe—a figure far higher than that of any other international broadcaster. Is not the World Service an unrivalled way of demonstrating the values of this country?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I heartily endorse everything that my noble friend, with his considerable experience, rightly says. The World Service is an immensely powerful network for soft power and for underpinning and promoting the values for which we all stand. Everything that he says is right.