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5.42 pm
Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris), who is one of the few truly civilised Tories left in the House.
I declare my interests in the subject: I am one of the parliamentary advisers to the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union, which represents many World Service staff members. Before I was elected to Parliament in 1983, I was the union's full-time official and was responsible for its membership in Bush house and at Caversham. Now, my contact with it is as a fairly regular contributor to the excellent programme "People in Politics" and to BBC World Service Television.
One question that strikes me--I know that it strikes many other hon. Members--is how such a wonderful service can be provided under such primitive conditions at Bush house and elsewhere. The World Service is superb--we can agree on that across the House. It is one of the few British institutions, perhaps the only one, that are world leaders but, in relative terms, it is run on a shoestring. There is enormous cross-party support in the House for the World Service, but, despite all the plaudits that it receives in the House and around the world, it still keeps having to suffer cuts. Those cuts have come not just from this Government but from previous Labour Governments--that must be placed firmly on the record.
Who in the Foreign Office has the knife out for the World Service? It is clear that someone has. No one in the Foreign Office is listening to what we are saying in the House and someone is feeding poison against the World Service into the Secretary of State's ear. Someone has been feeding that poison into the ears of previous Secretaries of State, including Labour ones. I do not understand how we could even contemplate cuts, however small, in one of this country's success stories--this country is short of success stories, despite the propaganda and noise from Conservative Members.
The Secretary of State mentioned the need to reduce expenditure. Which successful multinational company that was the world leader in its sector would contemplate cutting its capital expenditure? Such a company would increase its capital expenditure to enhance its position as the world leader. It is nonsense; we would not expect any multinational company to operate in that way, so why should we expect the BBC World Service to do so?
If the Government want to find extra resources to fund the World Service, they should look elsewhere in the Foreign Office budget. They could look to the
£7.6 million spent by the Department last year on official hospitality or to the almost £400 million spent by the Department every year on funding our embassies and high commissions around the world. I am not saying that they do not do a good job; I am not even saying that I have not raised the odd glass of champagne at a Foreign Office reception. But I would cheerfully give it up and I would certainly give up the second and third glasses to allow the money to be used to fund the World Service. There is plenty of opportunity in the Foreign Office budget for the Government to find the savings if they are so minded, but the World Service faces a cut of £5.4 million in its capital expenditure in the next financial year.
The Secretary of State said that the private finance initiative could be used, but how will that be funded? The money has to be paid back; it is not free money. Someone will expect the interest payments and the leasebacks to be funded--they will have to be funded from operating expenditure. Where else is the money to come from? I should be grateful if the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley), would clarify that issue when he winds up the debate. As I understand it, future operating expenditure will be cut by £8.6 million in the first year of the next triennium. I should be grateful if the Minister would either confirm that or tell me that my facts are wrong.
The Government announced the decision on capital cuts and the availability of the PFI after the business plans of the World Service had been drawn up, yet Ministers have the nerve to appear on the "Today" programme or stand at the Dispatch Box and talk about efficiency. They tell the World Service to throw into the melting pot all the capital funds and projects that it has already drawn up and to see whether it can raise money in the private sector. That is a crazy way to run any business, particularly the World Service. The Government talk about efficiency savings, but the way in which they have handled the funding of the World Service is the opposite of efficient. The World Service still has to deal with the last round of cuts--about £6 million.
Part of the measure of the efficiency of any organisation, including the World Service, is staff morale. At present, morale is low because, despite receiving plaudits from politicians, both in and out of the studios, and from around the world, the World Service staff continually have to face further cuts. They face those cuts because some idiot in the Foreign Office feels that it is not sensible to invest taxpayers' money in the World Service.
The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) said that he was not happy to have privatisation in this sector. If the Government have their way, the BBC's transmission--both domestic and World
Service--will soon be privatised. That privatisation, in itself, poses a dramatic threat to BBC independence, especially that of the World Service.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway), who has now left the Chamber, mentioned the censorship of the BBC's Arabic service over the subject of Dr. Al-Masari. The Secretary of State said that he wanted some hard evidence--it is there for anyone to see. The BBC's Arabic television service is transmitted via a Saudi-owned satellite relay station in Rome. The company that owns the satellite station is Orbit Communications, which in turn is owned by a cousin of King Fahd, and it blanked out the BBC's transmission. If we sell the BBC's transmission service-- if the transmitters go and they are bought by foreign companies, perhaps companies that are fronts for foreign Governments--the independence and impartiality of the BBC World Service will be threatened.
Mr. George Walden (Buckingham):
I have a small interest to declare. I remember receiving a cheque from the overseas service of the BBC--I suppose that that is under the same rubric--in the 1980s. It was a cheque for a very small sum, paid to me for impersonating an English dustman to the then Soviet Union. It was a rotten script-- I believe I wrote it myself. I subsequently impersonated a British politician for the World Service several times to several countries. Those are my interests.
I need not express sympathy or admiration for the World Service, because every right hon. or hon. Member who has spoken has done so for me. All I shall say is that it is a pity that sometimes we do not hear programmes of the same analytical depth on, let us say, BBC Radio 4. Some of the malt whiskies that we make in this country are delicious, but one can find them only abroad; it is similar with some of the World Service broadcasts. Would that one might hear them on the domestic services more frequently.
The establishment of BBC World Service Television was mentioned earlier. I have a bit of a "mea culpa" to make because, at the time when I joined the campaign to try to obtain some seedcorn--if my memory serves, only about £4 million--my pitch was that if we did not have that £4 million, nothing would happen.
I turned out to be wrong, in the sense that something got off the ground. It is a matter for discussion whether it might have done so sooner, and perhaps would have put in a better competitive performance vis-o-vis CNN if that
£4 million had been found, but I must be honest and say that the Government were right, to the extent that the service did materialise and is doing well at the moment.
Listening to the debate, I have a sense of disproportion. It seems to me disproportionate that the Government should have allowed themselves to be put in the dock in the way that they have been during the debate and in the way that they have been by the media, for the sake of a
relatively small sum. I am occasionally accused of not understanding politics, but I understand that to make a big political issue out of a small number of millions is not a very political approach. I pride myself on understanding that, if nothing else. The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) added to the sense of disproportion in the excessive forcefulness of some of his remarks. One cannot get away from the fact that the Government have enormously expanded the World Service, and should be congratulated on doing so.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State gave two assurances earlier, which have in effect punctured the debate. First, he said to my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) that he would reconsider the matter if essential programmes were threatened. Secondly, he made what I understand to be an important concession, allowing capital to be transferred to revenue if that should prove necessary.
It is odd that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State did not say that on "Today" this morning, because everyone knows that "Today" is the real Parliament in this country. [Hon. Members: "Rubbish."]
Mr. John Humphrys is the Opposition spokesman, the Prime Minister and Mr. Speaker to boot. What better place might there be for my right hon. and learned Friend to make his two concessions? For that is what they are. I assume that those concessions were arrived at after a great deal of scurrying and patter of fast footwork in the Treasury during the day. Never mind; we got there in the end.
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