Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Uma Kumaran Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Uma Kumaran (Stratford and Bow) (Lab)]

I would like to thank the Clerks of the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, and the International Development Committee for their support, and my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for securing this supplementary estimates debate. Late last year, the Foreign Affairs Committee heard evidence from the Foreign Secretary and the now former permanent under-secretary. It was a valuable opportunity for Committee members to hear, in the words of Sir Philip Barton, about the

“tough choices that have been made and will continue to have to be made”.

Those are the tough choices on our spending, on the aid budget, on investment spending and on our soft power resources. Those tough choices are not new, but in these volatile times when the power of diplomacy and our soft power matters more than ever, they can have seismic impacts.

In 2011, under the coalition Government, the BBC World Service had to eliminate five language services due to cuts of £46 million per year. This included the entire BBC News service in North Macedonia. Coalition cuts to grant funding from the Foreign Office meant that this trusted service with extensive reach—one in every eight Macedonians listened to the BBC—had to close. At the time, the country was attempting to join NATO and the EU. Russia was opposed. Since this cut, North Macedonia has been subject to a decade-long propaganda campaign from Russia—a campaign of misinformation that has spread fake news on covid, amplified regional tensions and demonised NATO and our European allies. In the past years, the UK has deployed military experts in disinformation to counter the malign influence of Russia on the western Balkans—an influence seeking to destabilise our entire continent.

The example of North Macedonia shows that we cannot risk a fractured approach. Cutting the BBC World Service, a globally trusted news source, and neglecting our soft power while our defence spending is countering misinformation does not seem the right thing to do. The absence of the BBC World Service allows our adversaries to step in and fill the vacuum left by the UK’s withdrawal, as was alluded to by the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry).

There are real dangers when we allow hostile propaganda to go unchallenged. It has been described as a tsunami of bad actors. When Conservative cuts forced the BBC World Service in the middle east, BBC Arabic, to cease broadcasting, the same frequency was taken over by Russia Today and Sputnik. The global director of BBC News told the Foreign Affairs Committee that, on the day of the walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon, that frequency was “essentially Russian propaganda”. Russia is investing in disinformation to target Arabic-speaking audiences and to create false pretexts for its invasion of Ukraine.

Disinformation has real-world consequences, and where UK soft power retreats, hostile states step in. They are pumping in billions of pounds because they know what is at stake: the battle for the truth. Future assessments of funding for the World Service must consider the impact on international and national security of disinformation in our world. This is just one example that demonstrates that our national defence and our spending overseas are both vital for this nation’s long-term security.

I am pleased to see the Government’s commitment to BBC World Service grant funding reflected in the FCDO supplementary estimate. We know that there are tough choices to be made, we know that there are those who wish to do harm to Britain and we know that the defence of our country in an ever more dangerous world is essential, so we must put Britain’s defences and Britain first. I am also pleased to see that, despite this, the Government have reiterated their firm commitment to prioritising programmes in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza.

There are clearly many strategic calculations to be taken into account, but the impartial and trusted journalism of the BBC World Service is an antidote to disinformation. The risks from malign actors who want to undermine democracy will not go away any time soon. I strongly urge Ministers to ensure that assessments of funding for the World Service take into account the national security consequences of disinformation.