BBC World Service

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on securing this debate. It is not the first that he has secured on the subject of the World Service and I am sure it will not be the last. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and congratulate him on his maiden speech. He said that education is his passion; education is also my passion, and I look forward to hearing his contributions to debates on that subject going forward.

The World Service is an institution that I have supported and worked with for many years; it is one for which I have the greatest respect and admiration as the world’s most trusted and best-known international news broadcaster. It has had to adapt to the effects of cuts—politically motivated cuts—in funding over a period of more than a decade but has adapted to the challenges that that has presented with a determination to maintain the high standards and long reach for which it is renowned worldwide.

When its grant in aid from the then FCO ended, it was widely predicted that the move to licence-fee funding would see a reduction in services and quality of programmes; yet, while to a limited extent the first happened, the second did not, which has been due to the hugely talented and dedicated staff who work for the World Service. Today, its output can be said to be in a good place, with a total reach, as other noble Lords have said, of 365 million each week—a remarkable increase of 50% since 2016.

However, the World Service has achieved that despite, not because of, government. A succession of Tory Administrations have undermined the BBC as an institution, regarding it as insufficiently supportive of government policies. The contempt in which the corporation was held by the Johnson Administration reached its zenith with what I can only describe as the caricature appointment of Nadine Dorries—a long-time outspoken opponent of the BBC—as Culture Secretary. She regularly accused it of lacking impartiality in its programming, so it is somewhat ironic—in fact, it is much more serious than that—that, since her departure, the BBC has appointed a former GB News editorial director as its director of news programmes. Research commissioned by the BBC last year found that the organisation is associated around the world with distinctive British values of fairness, integrity and impartiality. What price those values now?

The World Service always keeps parliamentarians up to date with events in the world’s most troubled areas with its detailed briefings, both online and in person. Two days ago, I was privileged to attend an event organised jointly by the British Group of the IPU and the World Service to show a BBC Eye documentary entitled “Occupied”. That was a stunning secretly filmed record of life under occupation in Kherson that shed light on how the war in Ukraine impacts civilians and day-to-day life. It was very moving and was backed up by World Service journalists giving us their own experiences, as well as a visiting Ukrainian MP giving a first-hand account of life in her country.

Despite providing a small amount of additional funding following the Russian invasion, the Government have again made a political decision to cut the BBC’s funding, with no increases over the next three years. Following a strategic review of the World Service, the BBC’s reaction to that has been to cut its budget by £28.5 million a year from next year, resulting in almost 20% of all staff being made redundant. Whatever else they may be, those staff are not redundant; they are very much needed by many people living in conditions that we can only imagine.

Let us be absolutely clear where the blame lies: it lies fairly and squarely at the Government’s door. It can be argued, as indeed the National Union of Journalists does convincingly in a comprehensive briefing sent to noble Lords for today’s debate, that the cuts might have been more carefully targeted. One example mentioned by other noble Lords is the cutting of the Persian radio service for 17 hours a day. That will certainly be welcomed by the Iranian regime and will leave a void that may well be filled by a Saudi-funded channel. The BBC has been forced to make those cuts as a result of a Government who—no matter what the Minister may say in his reply—clearly do not value the BBC. In the words of the National Union of Journalists,

“These cuts were forced upon it by Conservative ministers who dislike the national broadcaster more than they value the national interest.”


Many in the Chamber today—and, I dare say, much further afield—will endorse that statement.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, the essential work of the World Service must be funded directly by the FCDO, as was the case prior to 2011. If I can nudge my noble friend on our Front Bench, I hope that that is a policy that the next Labour Government will feel able to take forward. It should be a given that our Government fully appreciate the huge asset that the World Service is, both to the BBC and to the UK. It should, but it will require a change of Government to bring that about.