Supplementary written evidence from the
BBC World Service
At its hearing on 16 March 2011, the Foreign Secretary
told the Committee that cuts to BBC World Service were "not
disproportionate" within the FCO family. He highlighted that
"from the start of reductions in the FCO baseline in 2007-08
to the end in 2013-14, the World Service will be the same proportion
of FCO spending at the end as it was at the beginning". (Q65).
The World Service has previously provided information
on the 16% real terms cut in revenue funding announced in the
2010 Spending Review. To date, World Service has not provided
data on how this compares to cuts in the FCO budget, because this
data has not been available to us. However, we are happy to confirm
that the figures the Committee has obtained from the House of
Commons library are accurate with respect to World Service funding.
In the BBC's view, the central facts are that World
Service funding was reduced by 16% in the Spending Review while
the table included in the FAC's report on FCO Performance and
Finances, published on 11 February 2011, showed that the real
terms reduction in the net FCO budget (ie not including BBC World
Service and the British Council) is 6%.
When considering the comparison with the 2007-08
position, we would make the following observations:
- In common with all Government funded operations,
World Service must make cuts from its existing levels of activity,
ie its 2010-11 spend, not the level of spend it had in 2007-08.
It is not clear why the 2007-08 position should be used as the
relevant comparator.
- 2007-08 was the final year of the 2004 Spending
Review settlement. In the next year (following the 2007 CSR settlement),
the Government increased World Service's revenue funding by £18
million to enable it to launch BBC Persian TV and to take BBC
Arabic TV to 24 hours a day broadcasting. To reduce the level
of cuts to other services announced by the World Service in January
2011, we could have closed these new television services to reduce
spend to 07/08 levels. We have not proposed this because it would
not be appropriate to curtail the most modern and most needed
services in the portfolio, delivering significant benefit to their
audiences particularly in the context of ongoing instability and
uncertainty in north Africa and the Middle East. As a result,
bigger cuts are being made in other areas to achieve the higher
savings target.
- There will be other variations to the BBC's and
to the FCO's budgets which provide important context to the historic
comparison. We note for example that the figures from the House
of Commons Library obtained by the FAC exclude conflict prevention
money. World Service additional money (for BBC Arabic and Persian,
see above) has not been excluded from the figures.
We would also point out that the Library figures
show the WS share of the total budget is not unchanged over the
period. It declines from 16.0% in 07/08 to 15.6% in 13/14. That
0.4% reduction costs World Service £6.6 million per annum—equivalent
to one-seventh of the £46 million total savings the World
Service is required to make by 2014.
23 March 2011
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