MPs: 'Reverse BBC World Service cuts'

The cuts to BBC World Service should be reversed because the global broadcaster is too valuable in promoting the UK overseas, an influential committee of MPs has said.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee said that the planned 16% cut to World Service's £237 million-a-year funding represents "false economy" and a move that has potential "long-term ramifications".

In January, the BBC announced that five of its foreign language services will be axed and up to 650 jobs lost at World Service due to the Foreign Office funding cuts.

However, the committee claims that World Service "is of such value to the nation that its income should be ring-fenced against spending cuts".

Richard Ottaway, Conservative MP and committee chairman, said: "The BBC World Service has been described by Kofi Annan as 'perhaps Britain's greatest gift to the world'. The value of the World Service in promoting the UK across the globe, by providing a widely respected and trusted news service, far outweighs its relatively small cost.

"The recent dramatic events in north Africa and the Middle East have shown that the 'soft power' wielded through the World Service could bring even more benefits to the UK in the future than it has in the past, and that to proceed with the planned cuts to the World Service would be a false economy."

World Service recently shut down its Russian-language radio service and reduced its Hindi shortwave radio service in an attempt to reduce its costs by £46m a year. The cuts are also down to the decision to transfer funding responsibility for World Service from the Foreign Office to the BBC licence fee by 2014.

The committee described the move to hand World Service funding to the BBC as an "essentially financial" decision that was "taken at very short notice, albeit with the full agreement of BBC top management".

In a published report, the MPs questioned whether World Service's funding would be secure when the BBC funds it outright, citing "risk of a gradual diversion of resources to fund other BBC activities".

The committee instead suggested using part of the Department for International Development's budget to make up the funding shortfall for World Service.

In a statement, the BBC said: "The cuts being made to the World Service are a consequence of last autumn's spending review and the BBC regrets the scale and pace of cuts that have been necessary.

"If, in the light of the report, the government is prepared to re-open aspects of the spending review settlement, the BBC will be pleased to engage with them constructively.

"The BBC is committed to the long-term future of the World Service and hopes to reinvest when responsibility for funding transfers to the licence fee in 2014."

The National Union of Journalists welcomed the committee's report and called on the cuts at World Service to be reversed before more damage is done.

NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said: "The committee report is acidly polite in pointing out that there is a 'discrepancy between the relatively small amounts of money needed to avoid the most damaging cuts to the World Service and the scale of the Department for International Development Spending Review settlement'.

"The committee says - and any fair observer can only agree - that 'a transfer of just 0.35% of DFID's resource budget over the next three years would compensate for the proposed 16% reduction in World Service funding'. There is no reason why such a transfer should not be made if the political will to carry it out is present."

He added: "Let's not mince words. The report shows that the cutters have got it badly wrong in attacking the BBC World Service. This report is an opportunity to reverse that disastrous policy."