MPs oppose BBC commercialisation of World Service
A committee of MPs has said it is strongly opposed to BBC plans to commercialise the World Service, and raised concerns about the "steady erosion" of the international broadcaster's influence within the corporation.
Advertisement
The Commons foreign affairs select committee sounded the warning in its annual review of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), which is handing over funding of the World Service to the BBC licence fee from April.
Proposals under consideration include introducing language services, provided they are commercially self-sustaining, according to a letter in November from Peter Horrocks, the BBC's director of global news.
The committee said in its 41-page report: "We strongly oppose the proposals currently under consideration by the BBC Trust for a wider commercialisation of the World Service."
The MPs expressed concern about the results of extensive job losses and budget cuts. The World Service is being integrated more closely with the BBC's domestic operations as the funding switch approaches.
It has already moved from its longtime headquarters in Bush House across central London to BBC Broadcasting House, with World Service journalists now sharing a newsroom with their domestic colleagues.
"We continue to be concerned that the protection of the BBC World Service's interests within the BBC's governance structure is not as strong as is being claimed," the report says. "And the picture appears to us to be one of steady erosion of World Service influence within the BBC. The result may be that the World Service is more regularly denied the resources it needs to maintain or develop services."
The report recommends that the World Service should be represented on the BBC director general's executive board and that Horrocks should join the corporation's management board.
Other Trending Stories
A BBC spokesman defended the proposals, arguing that parts of the World Service had already been commercialised with no adverse impact on editorial output.
"We have introduced advertising on our Russian, Arabic and Spanish-language online sites and trialled some advertising on our FM radio frequency in Berlin," he said. "The BBC's reputation for providing impartial and independent news will always take precedence over wider commercial goals."
The spokesman said the World Service had been told to increase commercial activity by the FCO in 2010, and again by the BBC Trust in the draft of the World Service operating licence published last year.
He said that if this position was maintained when the operating licence was introduced, the BBC would "continue to explore appropriate opportunities which could lessen the cost of the World Service to licence-fee payers".
The spokesman added: "We have always made clear that commercial activity will only ever constitute a small proportion of our funding and that there will not be advertising on the World Service in the UK."
He said the World Service was championed at the highest levels in the corporation, with Tony Hall, the director general, and James Harding, the director of news, aware of its vital importance "to the BBC, Britain and the world" and aiming to double its global reach to 500 million by 2022.
A BBC Trust spokeswoman said: "The detail and governance for any changes to the existing commercial funding arrangements for the World Service would be subject to agreement with the government."
The committee said it strongly welcomed the increased funding that the BBC intends to make available for the World Service in 2014-15, up from £238.5m to £245m year-on-year.
However, MPs expressed surprise that the BBC was not willing to publish longer-term funding plans to ensure the World Service's financial security. It said it intended to take evidence on the World Service, including from FCO ministers and BBC representatives.