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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): The hon. Gentleman has repeated to the House what he said on the radio this morning: that he was prepared on behalf of a future Labour Government to commit them not to cut the language services of the BBC World Service. He has, however, declined to give an assurance that he would replace any reduction in resources that might have been implemented. The only way in which one can reconcile those statements is on the basis that the hon. Gentleman accepts that, through better value for money, the BBC should be able to maintain its existing language services without the restoration of the cuts, otherwise he would be committing himself to such a restoration, and he is not prepared to do that.
Mr. Cook: The Secretary of State followed me on the radio this morning and said that it was not his wish to cut the language services. I do not understand, then, the problem that he is putting before us. If I was confronted by BBC World Service executives saying that they could not provide those language services on the present budget, I would go back and look at the £77 million that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was spending on management consultants and ask how much of that could be put into the World Service.
We have a Government who can always find the money that they want for their political priorities. They are currently spending £1 billion on privatising the rail service. They are spending £1 billion more a year on extra bureaucracy in the NHS to make the reforms work. One per cent. of either of those sums would fully fund the BBC World Service and do much more good for Britain than either objective.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield):
Before my hon. Friend moves on, is not it the case that the Labour party has a long tradition of supporting the BBC World Service, whereas the Government have a patchy record? I remember, when I was first in the House, when the Government wanted to cut the language service to Latin America--to Argentina in particular--because it was not necessary any more, just before the Falklands conflict. That is the sort of long-term view that the Conservative Government have of the BBC World Service. Every time that they are in a bit of a squeeze, they want to cut the BBC World Service.
Mr. Cook:
I press home my hon. Friend's point by turning to the point that the Secretary of State was leading us on to about value for money.
We are not dealing with an overweight organisation in which the savings can be found by a crash course in slimming. The BBC World Service has already been through three lean years. Its operating budget has already been slimmed by 8 per cent. during those past three years. In that time, it has implemented many of the recommendations of the National Audit Office. In the same month in which the Government revealed the cuts, the National Audit Office published a second report in which it praised the World Service for an "improvement in management performance" and significant strides forward.
I hope that, against that background of an efficient organisation that has already made major savings, the Foreign Secretary, when he comes to speak, will treat hon. Members as adults and not continue with the pretence that the cuts in grant aid do not matter because no service will be affected.
I heard also this morning the managing director of the BBC World Service tell the nation that the cuts will mean cuts in services--cuts so significant that it would be wrong to try to meet them by salami slicing, but which would have to be met by dropping whole discrete services. That is why, on Sunday, the executive of the World Service met to consider which languages could be dropped from its portfolio if those cuts went ahead in 1997.
I repeat the question that the Secretary of State failed to answer last week. If Ministers were at that conference, which languages would they drop to save the £10 million? This, after all, is the moment in history when the European Union is opening its doors to central and eastern Europe. The Governments of those countries will take part in joint decisions that will affect the lives of our citizens. This is not the time when we should be reviewing broadcasting in Czech, Polish or Hungarian.
I shall be frank with the House. The House needs to pay attention to the very real possibility that enlargement of the European Union may strengthen the hand of Germany, which already has substantial influence in that region of Europe. One of the strongest cards that Britain has in its hand is that the BBC World Service is listened to by 10 times the audience of its German rival. That gives us tremendous access to influence and good will. We should be guaranteeing, not threatening, the future of those programmes.
If central Europe is not the place for cuts, where else in the world might they be made? During the past few months, both sides of the House have joined in an enjoyable debate on the lessons that the tiger economies hold for Britain. We differ on what those lessons might be, but I think that we are agreed on the exciting growth of those economies as markets for British trade. Is this the time to be reviewing whether we should supply the Mandarin service that goes to Taiwan or the services to the younger tiger economies of Indonesia, Burma and Thailand? If we drop any of those, at what cost to British trade do we make the saving in public spending?
The Foreign Secretary will know that British companies and British business leaders, from Standard Chartered to Unilever, have written to him opposing the cuts because the BBC World Service opens doors to business by creating a favourable image of British standards.
In my current portfolio, I am obliged to accept Governor Patten as above party politics. Therefore, I shall seize this opportunity of agreeing with him. When he was here last October and gave his lecture on the tiger economies, Governor Patten, speaking of the BBC World Service, said:
The BBC World Service also, however, provides valuable support for humanitarian relief and for economic development. In Rwanda and Serbia, it provided a missing person link line, which has brought together parents and children separated in different refugee camps. In eastern Europe, the World Service has provided programmes as part of the Marshall plan of the mind, which has helped the populations of the former communist countries come to terms with modern technologies and market economies. If the debate is to be, as the Foreign Secretary seems to suggest, about value for money, I should like to hear what better value he could get in helping the people of those regions than by investing through those services.
Sir Peter Emery (Honiton):
I have listened closely to the hon. Gentleman's argument and criticisms. Will he clearly tell the House how much extra he and the Labour party believe should be given to the World Service to fulfil the tasks that he has outlined?
Mr. Cook:
The irony of the right hon. Gentleman's question is that the BBC World Service is asking not for extra money, but for its budget not to be cut. It could live even within a stable budget after the 8 per cent. cuts of the past three years. If we want the BBC World Service to build on its success, surely the least that we can offer it is the stability and security of the assurance that that budget will continue.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Cook:
I will, but this must be the last occasion, as many hon. Members wish to speak.
Mr. Arnold:
Bearing it in mind that the real increase in spending on the BBC World Service since 1979, during the years of the Conservative Government, is 50 per cent., what was the real increase in spending, if any, by the Labour Government on the service?
Mr. Cook:
I understand that it is now permissible for Opposition Members to put in a good word for Lady Thatcher, and I would concede that she carried through a major expansion of World Service resources because she had a proper grasp of its importance in world affairs. That has not been the story in this Parliament, when BBC World Service resources have gone down by 8 per cent. It is now faced with another 8 per cent. cut in the next two years. I do not wish to take sides on Lady Thatcher's general observation that the Government are letting down the Thatcherite legacy, but on this point, they are certainly letting down the record that she left behind.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster):
Answer the question.
Mr. Cook:
I have answered the question of the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) in that, in this Parliament, the Government are cutting the World Service's budget.
"It is worth every penny of public money it receives."
That is true--true not just in that it backs the influence of British diplomacy, but true also in that every penny put into the BBC World Service produces pounds in British trade and probably also pounds in inward investment into Britain. I do not therefore rest my case on altruism. The case for the House backing the BBC World Service rests on British self-interest, because it gives us a source of political leadership and diplomatic influence, and it is the basis of the trade expansion on which our economy thrives or fails.
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