BBC World Service and British Council

Lord Jay of Ewelme Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)]

My Lord, I have great admiration and respect for both the British Council and the BBC World Service but I want to focus in the few minutes I have today on the BBC World Service. If I may be allowed one small comment on the title of the debate, I would have preferred to talk about the BBC World Service as promoting British interests through promoting British values, which would have guaranteed the independence and objectivity that are so important to it and to which other noble Lords have referred.

The BBC World Service has built up a huge and justified reputation for clear and objective reporting of developments around the world, and it is listened to for that reason. The more closed and controlled the regime abroad to which it is broadcasting, the more important its broadcasts and values are to the people who listen to it. That is why a number of noble Lords who have spoken today, and whose views I share, would very much like the BBC World Service to be broadcasting to North Korea. I know there are difficulties in that but I think it is an aspiration that it should keep.

Those who listen to the BBC World Service in countries like North Korea know that the broadcasts come from London but what is even more important is knowing that they are independent and unbiased. For that reason I, for one, am glad that the World Service is now funded from the BBC’s budget and not from the FCO’s. When I was in the Foreign Office and travelling, for example, in Moscow, Tehran and Beijing, I found a certain wry scepticism as to whether the BBC World Service could be genuinely independent when funded by the state. The BBC is seen as pretty independent, largely because every Government thinks it is part of the Opposition. That seems to me to be a better place for the BBC World Service to be. I am sure that Members of this House and others will put the necessary pressure on the BBC to ensure that the World Service gets the support and the funding that it needs.

Perhaps this is rather daring in the light of what one or two others have said, but I want to finish by saying a word or two about the values that we hope the BBC World Service and the British Council will promote. The British Council sums those up pretty well in its latest annual report, speaking of our openness and pluralism as a society, to which I would add tolerance. These values come under attack from time to time, sometimes from within, sometimes from without, but they seem to have an enduring quality. They include an openness to ideas; an outward-looking society; a free if, we hope, responsible press; and a plural society, open to and respecting different cultures and faiths as long as they respect us too. We do not always keep to that, of course, and our press and the social media tend to focus on our failings and not our success. I thought it sad last week that more prominence was given to the intemperate remarks of a young Briton in Syria than to the appeal by British imams, Sunni and Shia, for those who want to help those suffering in Syria and Iraq to do so through respectable and responsible charities rather than through fighting. I would add to that list of values a tolerance of others and a respect of others’ views at home and abroad. It seems to me that openness, pluralism and tolerance within a democratic society governed by the rule of law are important values in an unstable and rather dangerous world. The more that the BBC, particularly the World Service, can do to promote those values overseas in its own way, the more it is not just helping those who live in other societies but promoting British interests too.