BBC Monitoring Service

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Absolutely. The only good thing to be said about the propaganda of one’s adversaries is that sometimes, unwittingly, it gives us an insight into their plans and a forewarning of their evil intent. Let us ensure that we preserve the crown jewels and that we do not rely simply on fluctuations in licence fee income for that necessary task.

I have said that the Caversham estate was to be sold off, despite the amazing integration that existed there with the American counterpart of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which is now known more regularly as the OSE. It was therefore no wonder that the Defence Committee decided to entitle its December 2016 report “Open Source Stupidity: The Threat to the BBC Monitoring Service”. That was a pun on open source intelligence—and for those interested, it is HC 748, and it is still in print.

The then Defence Committee Chairman, whom modesty prevents me from identifying, pointed out—this is a long quote, but it is worthwhile—that:

“The Coalition Government was warned, in the strongest possible terms, not to leave the BBC Monitoring service unprotected by ending its ring–fenced annual grant and transferring this minor financial burden to the licence–fee payer. By doing so, it gave the BBC a free hand to inflict successive rounds of cuts, now culminating in the loss of the specialised and dedicated Caversham headquarters.

The vast increase in open source information in the recent past makes it one of the few tools still left in the Government’s arsenal which can provide almost real time information and analysis on global developments. To allow the BBC to change and shape it in a different direction is in contravention of UK national interest. It is especially bewildering when you consider the annual cost of BBC Monitoring is around £25 million.

The decision to evict BBC Monitoring’s US counterpart—Open Source Enterprise—from its UK base at Caversham Park and break the physical link between the two is short–sighted. The BBC’s strategy for BBC Monitoring will downgrade our contribution to open source intelligence sharing between the UK and the US at a time when European nations must demonstrate to President–elect Trump”—

as he then was, for the first time—

“that we are committed to paying our way in the fields of defence and security. As one of our witnesses said, ‘this is the height of folly’.”

That was a long quote, but it was true then and it is true today.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger).

[Alex Ballinger]

The right hon. Member is delivering an excellent speech. As the Defence Committee did in 2016, the Foreign Affairs Committee is now conducting an inquiry into disinformation, which covers many of the same areas that he discusses. Does he agree that the increasing spread of disinformation, increasingly in countries that are non-English-speaking but have a real geopolitical significance for the UK, makes the BBC Monitoring service even more important today than it was in 2016?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I agree entirely, and before I give way for the next intervention, I will read what I had just been about to say.

The report’s main conclusion was that the Government should reinstate their previous model of funding BBC Monitoring through a ringfenced grant in aid, rather than allowing the funding to come from the licence fee. As a non-partisan, cross-party body, I doubt if today’s Defence Committee would take a radically different view. Indeed, we have just heard from the Foreign Affairs Committee representative that that view still has a great deal of validity.