BBC: Government Support

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, for this extremely welcome and timely debate, and incidentally for providing an occasion for the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool to give such a thought-provoking maiden speech.

I will focus on the World Service and the foreign language channels, about which I have more knowledge and experience than its domestic output. That experience was most vividly brought to life during the years when I was Britain’s Permanent Representative to the UN between 1990 and 1995. It was during that pretty tumultuous period that I came to appreciate what an extraordinary asset the BBC World Service was to Britain’s soft power, perhaps summed up best by President Mikhail Gorbachev’s remark at the time of the coup against him in 1991 that it was the BBC that had kept him in touch with what was actually happening in Moscow while he was cut off in the Crimea, under arrest.

Why is it an asset? Not because it broadcasts pro-British propaganda—it does not do that—but because it provides a continuous flow of professional, evidence-based reporting and commentary. I believe that that remains the case; all the more so now, when the airwaves are full of the fake news and disinformation which has proliferated in recent years and shows no sign of abating. The facts about the BBC’s outreach speak for themselves: a worldwide audience of 456 million; an audience of 364 million for the World Service, up by 42% between 2016 and 2020; 43 language services. Can the benefit of that in terms of soft power be quantified precisely? I doubt that very much. But is it reality, in terms of influence? Undoubtedly, I would say.

That, in my view, is why it was a major error when the Cameron Government forced the BBC to finance its overseas work from the licence fee. This set up a disruptive tension within the BBC over the allocation of resources between its domestic and overseas work, which did not occur when the latter was financed directly by the Government. What on earth is the rationale for the poorest in society to pay exactly the same as the richest when it comes to financing that oversees output? I suggest that the sooner the old system is reinstated, the better, and I hope the Minister will address this point when he winds up the debate.

I do not wish to conclude these remarks without mentioning the cruel and disgraceful harassment of the journalists who work for the BBC’s Persian service, and their families, by the regime in Tehran. It may not be much solace to those affected by this harassment but, in a way, if you think about it, it is a tribute to the role they play in bringing to the people of Iran proper, facts-based, professional reporting, something which authoritarian regimes invariably fear and resent. The same is true in the case of Russia and China. We should, I believe, be exceedingly grateful to the BBC for what it does to make this possible.