My Lords, the Government highly value the BBC World Service; it is a soft power asset and the world’s most trusted news provider. The significant uplift in our funding to £137 million this financial year, despite the difficult fiscal context, demonstrates our support for it. Grant-in-aid funding for the next three years is being decided through the FCDO allocations process and will be made before the 2026-27 financial year. Potential longer-term funding mechanisms will be considered through the BBC charter review.
I am grateful to my noble friend for that Answer, and I am delighted that the settlement has been announced. The BBC World Service is one of the greatest instruments of soft power that we have. It is a lifeline to many in our difficult and divided world, including those in Iran, and I pay tribute to the very brave journalists of BBC Persian. When the world is full of dangerous propaganda, the World Service projects and protects our democratic values while delivering value for money. Although I am grateful for the information provided by my noble friend, I urge her to ensure that, in due course, funding will be moved back to the Government to provide stability and long-term planning. That is important for the service and for the journalists who serve the service.
I thank my noble friend. Her support for the World Service is long-standing and well known, and quite right too. The longer-term funding proposition for the World Service will need to be considered as part of the charter review. To be absolutely clear, the £137 million funding uplift that I referred to in my initial Answer is for this financial year. I think my noble friend may have misheard what I said. The allocations for next year will be made very shortly.
My Lords, in a few years, we will be celebrating the centenary of one of the UK’s many great inventions, the BBC World Service, which now reaches a remarkable 400 million people each week. It is the most trusted news service on the planet and a significant contributor to promoting British values across the globe. Can the Minister articulate any argument whatever—I cannot see one—for why the BBC World Service should be majority funded by the licence fee payer rather than fully funded by the taxpayer, which, for the overwhelming majority of its history, it was?
As the noble Lord will know, this is not a situation of our making but one that we inherited, and we are where we are. Our task, together with the BBC, is to make sure that the World Service is funded in a way that means it can continue to do the incredible work that it leads around the world, because, as the noble Lord says, it is the world’s most trusted source of news.
My Lords, on 15 January, I made the case that the BBC Persian Radio service needed to be sustained, and recent events have shown that to be necessary. I welcomed the Government issuing emergency funding so that the BBC Persian Radio service could be sustained. Does the Minister not agree that that illustrates one of the problems—namely, if we have critical World Service services funded by emergency funding then we cannot plan on a sustainable future? The delay in the allocations being made is regrettable. Can the Minister assure the House that, when those allocations are made soon, they will be over a three-year period, so that the BBC World Service can plan and make sure that we sustain these vital services for our country?
Multi-year allocations are incredibly important. That is why, in all the allocations that we are making as part of this process—not just for the World Service but for our teams in countries and for our partner organisations—we are seeking to do just that, because it means you get better value for every £1 you spend. We work closely with the World Service on issues around language. I am incredibly impressed and in awe of the way that the BBC has responded to the situation in Iran. Even with services having been banned, the latest figures I saw were that 28 million people are accessing that service. It is a real and good example of what can be achieved.
My Lords, following up the question of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, I ask the Minister a simple question: does she think it is fair that UK licence fee payers should have to pay so much towards the World Service?
Do I think it is fair? I guess that depends on what you think the licence fee is for. That is part of what the charter review process will tease out. I accept that what a licence fee payer may have wanted to pay for in the 1950s and 1960s may well be different now, because things have changed. The World Service is a tremendous asset to this country. There are many licence fee payers who enjoy the World Service here in the UK, as well as around the world. What we need to achieve, certainly from my perspective, is the longer-term stability and success of the World Service.
BBC Monitoring provides an exceptionally important service. If noble Lords have not had the chance to look into what it does, I would highly recommend it, particularly for situations such as that in Ukraine, where it is probably the most reliable source of information on the Russian war dead. Its work on misinformation and disinformation is highly significant to our ability to bring everything we can in support of Ukraine.
My Lords, as Russia and China spend about £8 billion a year on international state broadcasters, the BBC World Service is broadcasting trusted and generally balanced reporting in over 40 languages to 300 million people a week. However, that trust is undermined when BBC Arabic journalists are reported to have celebrated attacks against Israel. What work have Ministers done with the BBC to ensure that our taxpayer-funded broadcaster is maintaining impartiality, both here and internationally?
It is important that the BBC has editorial independence, but there is no doubt that there were issues that needed to be responded to following the Prescott revelations. I was pleased to see the way that the BBC reacted to that; it owned the problem and it has put in place measures to deal with it. The noble Lord started his comments by saying that we are being outspent by other nations, and that is undoubtedly true—welcome to the enlightened side of this debate.
My Lords, has the Minister had the chance to read the debate in your Lordships’ House on 26 February about the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on transnational repression? Specifically, has she read the evidence that was given by Reporters Without Borders about the plight of journalists who have been reporting on events in Iran? In particular, she will see there that women journalists have been treated in the most appalling manner conceivable—independent journalists who have been left bleeding on the streets of London. Will she ensure that we take the cross-departmental action that is recommended in that report at the earliest opportunity?