BBC Monitoring Service Debate
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Peter Prinsley
Main Page: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)Department Debates - View all Peter Prinsley's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(2 days, 2 hours ago)
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Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
Would the right hon. Member agree that in a world where autocracies are in the ascendency and false news spreads like the speed of light, Government funding for services that bring truth to the world has never been more important?
Sir Julian Lewis
I could not agree more. May I take the opportunity to thank the hon. Gentleman again for the excellent debate on the BBC World Service, which he led on 26 June, if I remember correctly, and which gave me the idea to bring forward the subject of BBC Monitoring separately?
Over very many years, BBC Monitoring had built up the closest conceivable relationship with its United States counterpart, known as Open Source Enterprise, or OSE. Indeed, the two organisations were based on alternate floors of the Caversham Park headquarters, dividing between them the coverage of global broadcasting to the enormous benefit of both countries in the transatlantic alliance. This was the nerve centre of world-beating open source intelligence, yet the BBC decided to evict OSE and sell the Caversham estate.