Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the BBC Monitoring Service in providing open source information to (a) his Department, (b) the Ministry of Defence and (c) the Cabinet Office; what recent assessment he has made of the contribution that Service to the Government's understanding of (i) the covid-19 pandemic in affected countries and (ii) the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in Russia; what plans he has to (A) make an assessment of trends in the level of workload of the Service and (B) reverse Service staff funding reductions made on relocation from Caversham Park to Central London; if he will make it his policy to restore ring-fenced funding to the Service; what plans he has to make an assessment of the role of the Service as part of the Integrated Review; and if he will make a statement.

BBC Monitoring (BBCM) provides services for the whole of Government and consistently meets or exceeds all agreed performance metrics as set out in the Monitoring Agreement. The use of BBCM across government is increasing with 30 departments and agencies using the service. For example, BBCM outputs make a direct contribution to situational awareness in support of MOD activities worldwide, and the Open Source Unit (OSU) in the FCDO, relies on BBCM's unique media monitoring, reporting and analysis alongside other sources to provide situational awareness and understanding of the wider context to FCDO policy leads.

The BBC is operationally and editorially independent of Government and therefore it is not appropriate for us to comment on matters such as staffing. The Government is satisfied with the current funding model and BBC Monitoring's ability to deliver the service based on agreed performance targets. The full conclusions of the Integrated Review will be published in due course.