BBC: Government Support

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, on having obtained this debate. I declare an interest, having been a BBC producer for 25 years. I am now a freelance producer working for United Kingdom and United States channels.

I support noble Lords who have spoken in favour of the value of the BBC to this country, but my fear right now is the big cuts taking place in staff in BBC news and current affairs. In BBC studios there are cuts to drama, arts and history, all of which will diminish the broadcasting environment in this country and impoverish viewers.

This afternoon I want to concentrate my comments on one particular area. After all, this debate is about the BBC’s value to a wider global audience. It is a service which is very close to my heart: the BBC Russian service, which faces constant threat of censorship. Every Friday night, the Justice Ministry in Moscow issues a list of journalists and organisations which are designated as foreign agents. From that moment, the designated journalist has to put a disclaimer, “foreign agent”, on all their posts, whether they are news items or on their child’s school’s social media page. Failure to do so three times could earn a prison sentence of up to five years. Not surprisingly, as a result there is great fear among journalists, people refuse to give interviews to them, and their work is tainted.

Independent Russian media outlets such TV Rain and Echo Moskvy have been designated foreign agents. Recently the BBC journalist Andrei Zakharov went on the list. Imagine the pressure on the 144 journalists of the BBC Russian service, many of them working in country, in that environment. Since I first worked in the USSR in 1989, I have known the importance of the Russian service as an independent voice and a projector of British values. At that time, I worked with a journalist from the Russian service who had been allowed to visit the country for the first time in 35 years. Wherever we went, she was greeted as a conquering heroine for keeping the voice of freedom alive through the long years of communism. Since the arrest in January this year of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, repression against independent and opposition voices in Russia has been dramatically ramped up, while this week the head of MI6 warned that Russia poses “an acute threat” to this country.

The BBC Russian service is now more important than at any time since the fall of the Soviet Union, reaching 5 million Russian users weekly and seeing a huge rise in young people engaging via social media. In a country where any criticism of the regime or support for the opposition is repressed and rarely heard in the mainstream media, this service has run brave stories. It published an important investigation into Russian mercenaries suspected of war crimes while being paid to fight in Libya, and connected them back to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man they call “Putin’s chef” because of his ability to cook up murky deals for the regime.

Unlike many other outlets, the BBC Russian service has a network of journalists across the country whose reports take the real temperature of what is happening in the country. In the Russian Far East, they covered the firing of a mayor because he dared to be independent from the regime and allowed the voices of his supporters to be heard. In the small town of Dimitrovgrad, the BBC Russian service one was one of the few that reported on an Orthodox priest who was fired and then vilified for saying of the opposition leader Navalny, “I used to criticise him, but now I want to shake his hand”. Last week, when 52 miners were killed in a mining explosion in Siberia, the BBC was one of the few media outlets which carried the voices of the desperate, bereaved families. They said the miners knew the management was ignoring safety protocols and deactivating the methane gas monitors, but poverty and lack of opportunity forced them to continue working in the mine.

The BBC Russian service costs £5.9 million a year, 75% of which is paid from the licence fee. I hope that the Government decide on an inflation-linked settlement. I have no doubt that failure to do so will adversely affect the BBC World Service and its language services. I also hope that the FCDO will very soon confirm its continuing commitment to the additional funding of these services, as laid out in the October spending review but as yet not confirmed beyond March 2022.

I urge the Minister to protect the BBC and ensure that it flourishes. Domestically it is important as a trusted source of news, and internationally, especially in repressive regimes such as Russia’s, it is a lifeline for independent thought and the projection of British values. A strong BBC will maintain our standing in the world, which the Prime Minister says is a central part of this Government’s global Britain policy.