BBC: Funding Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Peter Prinsley
Main Page: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)Department Debates - View all Peter Prinsley's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
BBC: Funding
Peter Prinsley Excerpts(1 day, 22 hours ago)
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Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I, too, would like to speak up for the BBC World Service and the brilliant people who work there.
The World Service describes itself as the world’s radio station. That is right: we are lucky to have it and must do whatever we can to support it. It offers 42 language services and is a beacon for democracy around the world. We know the truth when we hear it from the BBC. In a world of endless rolling information and disinformation, it is surely significant that the Arabic service alone saw a 9% audience growth to 35 million a week just last year. There are places in the world, especially where internet connections are restricted and local journalists are fearful, where conventional radio remains crucial. Abuse and state malfunction are called out, and the powerful are held to account. There are 318 million listeners every week.
In 2022, the World Service announced 382 job losses and the complete loss of the Persian radio broadcast, which was so important in its coverage of the protests against the Government in Tehran. In Lebanon, Russian state-backed media are now using the frequency suspended by BBC Arabic. There is news and there is fake news, as we have all learned. While we debate the funding of the BBC, let us therefore remember the World Service, which Kofi Annan described as
“Britain’s greatest gift to the world”.
Presently, about three quarters of World Service funding comes from the licence fee and about one quarter—about £100 million—comes from the Foreign Office. Previously in this Parliament, I said that amount was about the same as an F-35 jet, and we have 75 or so of those. As I said then, I ask whether some of us might agree that the vital soft power of the World Service is equivalent to at least one of our jets.