William Hague doubts BBC cuts commitment

Foreign secretary William Hague has questioned the BBC's commitment to securing budget savings at the BBC World Service global broadcasting division.

Hague said that cuts to the government grant for World Service, which will see its budget trimmed by £46m a year and result in the loss of up 650 jobs, were "challenging but fair".

The BBC is due to take over funding of the World Service from 2014, but the minister accused the corporation of lacking transparency over the required operational and administrative cuts ahead of the transfer, reports The Guardian.

"The FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] is committed to saving £100m from our administrative budgets while boosting frontline activity," said Hague.

"The World Service assured us at the time of their settlement that they were working to identify savings in this area too. The degree to which they have done so is not clear."

He added: "Details of precise proportions which the World Service devote to running costs such as HR, finance or IT, as compared to frontline activity have not been published although many other publicly funded organisations do now routinely publish this information.

"The World Service have given assurances at the time of the spending review settlement that they would bear down on these costs, we have no clear evidence of how this has happened."

Hague made the comments in a written response to a foreign affairs select committee report, which last month called for the cuts at the BBC World Service to be reversed because the global broadcaster is too valuable in promoting the UK overseas.

In response to the cuts, the BBC has already closed or scaled back a number of broadcast services, including parts of the BBC Arabic and the BBC Russian radio service.

Short-wave radio service BBC Hindi was initially earmarked for complete closure, but leading cultural and commercial figures persuaded the BBC to retain an hour-long evening news and current affairs bulletin in Hindi on an interim basis.

Even the scaling back of BBC Hindi has been criticised, with author Vikram Seth saying that it will contribute to "a great loss of goodwill and increase of mistrust" amongst millions of Indians.

Discussing the situation, Hague said: "We were not formally consulted on this decision [to shut down BBC Hindi] and we believe that the case they advanced for closure was not compelling.

"We very much hope that the reprieve will continue, either through a new model of funding or from the BBC identifying funds from their own resources."