BBC World Service

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Ottaway]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. It is a key recommendation of our report that the future governance relationship between the BBC World Service and the Foreign Office is not defined clearly enough in the concordat. Our concern is that we might be told, “You want an Arabic service and you want a Mandarin service, but we don’t have enough funds for both, so you need to decide which one”. To be fair to the Foreign Office, it has taken that point into account in its reply. I am pleased that it is still looking at the issue.

The central recommendation of the report was that the decision to reduce spending on the World Service by 16% should be reversed, but that if the funding has to be reduced, it should be done in such a way as to minimise the damage. A wide range of services will either be closed altogether or have a reduced output. I have no quarrel with some of the planned changes. For example, radio audiences in Vietnam have fallen to 1% and it has only about 110,000 listeners. In the meantime, Vietnam is seeing an internet boom with some 400,000 users now accessing the World Service online. The decision to focus on online services is obvious and sensible. None the less, we highlight plans to cut three services, which we think should be reviewed: the Mandarin, the Hindi and the Arabic services. It is doubtful whether their reduced output is in the nation’s interest.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I join others in congratulating the hon. Gentleman on his leadership role and his Select Committee on its excellent report. On the Hindi service, does he share my concern to the extent that the Government have made it clear, from last year’s Queen’s Speech to this week’s statement by the Foreign Secretary, that India is a priority? We are sending more diplomats to India in order to improve our relationship with that very important country, so will cutting the Hindi service not send out the wrong message to a country with which we really want to do business?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We must have shorter interventions, as we are rapidly running out of time.