BBC: Finance and Independence

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, I rise with some trepidation, as I am a trustee of the BBC, a body much-criticised these days, a post I have held since December 2011. I also declare that in the distant past, in the 1980s, I was a reporter and correspondent for the World Service for some seven years. My responsibilities on the trust cover international issues, and especially the World Service. It is a responsibility I take seriously, as I regard it as an incontestable fact that the World Service is at the forefront of the United Kingdom’s most widely admired institutions globally. While the United States, as other noble Lords have said, has fine universities and great newspapers such as the New York Times, it is striking that 180 US public radio stations broadcast the World Service. There are not many areas now where this country truly has global leads, but the World Service is undeniably one.

I also worked for the UN for several years, and was proud to work for Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General, who famously described the World Service as Britain’s greatest gift to the world in the 20th century. When I worked for the UN in places as different as Cambodia, Bosnia, and the Middle East, I was struck time and again by how important the World Service was to me, but more critically to the peoples of those countries, so often caught in turmoil and conflict. I recall accompanying Jack Straw when, as Foreign Secretary, he visited Iran. During a meeting with President Khatami, the Foreign Secretary’s views were challenged by his host, who pointedly said that his analysis was based on what he had heard on the Farsi service of the BBC that very morning. In Iran, as in the Arabic-speaking Middle East, south Asia and the heart of central Africa, the World Service’s influence is enormous, humbling, and something this country can be very proud of.

The noble Lord, Lord Hall, the BBC’s director-general, made an important speech on Monday of this week. What is the Government’s reaction to that speech, and in particular to the bold and ambitious ideas he put forward for the World Service? In doing so, he has heeded opinions, including in this House, on the future direction of the World Service. I will highlight three of those.

The first is an idea most ably addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who is not in his place today, regarding the severity of repression and absence of any meaningful freedom of expression in North Korea. We have looked at this issue and despite formidable obstacles, we are proposing launching a news service in the Korean language on short wave.

Secondly, concerns have been expressed repeatedly in this House and the other place about the absence of free discussion and limitations on the press in contemporary Russia. It is important that we move on this issue too, and the BBC has in mind the establishment of a satellite television service in the Russian language. Finally, we are proposing a new service for two of the poorest African countries, Ethiopia and Eritrea, in their indigenous languages, Amharic and Oromo.

This envisaged expansion underlines the principles of the Government’s own foreign and development policies and will be an important plank of the BBC’s plans for discussion during the forthcoming spending review. The BBC will seek to match any increase in funding for the World Service with the external income it can generate from its other global news services. I invite the Minister to comment on these ambitious proposals, which I believe are testimony to the soft power in which Britain excels, and of which the BBC is perhaps the strongest exponent.