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Lord Birt
Forget about soft power and take a hard look at what the BBC World Service is for, said Lord Birt. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Forget about soft power and take a hard look at what the BBC World Service is for, said Lord Birt. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Birt talks tough on who now foots the World Service bill

This article is more than 9 years old
Peter Preston
From its frozen funds, the BBC is paying for the World Service since the Foreign Office pulled out. As Lord Birt pointed out, that must means it can run it to suit a news, not a Whitehall, agenda

Jolly seminars discussing the future of BBC news and current affairs tend to get a little, let’s say, discursive round the edges. “Beige”, as the boss of Vice Media in Europe said, somewhat acerbically, about some of the corporation’s coverage. But at least Lord Birt, the demon king of the 1990s, was bone-hard, razor-sharp and black and white on one point that drew applause at a City University think-in last week.

James Harding, BBC head of news, had been talking emolliently about how extra resources flowing from the old World Service into his empire helped make the BBC a growing force, and “we should build it up, not tear it down”.

But make sure you get full value from that, Birt rasped back. The shambles of that 2010 licence “negotiation” (D Cameron, lead prop) had left the BBC with frozen fees and responsible for (a) maintaining the World Service and (b) paying for it as the Foreign Office withdrew its funding. Lord B trusted that, from the start of the next charter negotiations, this mess would be sorted out. If Broadcasting House was to maintain the service, forget about “soft power” and FO target lists.

World Service resources should be there for the quality of their journalism, addressing an audience – at home and abroad – that valued their experience and expertise. So bureaux and correspondents should be sited according to news need, not some yellowed Foreign Office plan. Pay the piper, play the necessary tune.

So much World Service discussion habitually worries about cuts to inherited structures, but here was a bracing counter-blast: never mind soft power; now let’s make all the hard choices that help us, not Whitehall.

■ One problem – possibly the only problem – when it came to replacing Ed Richards at Ofcom, was to find somebody who, unlike Ed, hadn’t worked for Tony Blair’s policy unit at No 10. Ah! What about Sharon White? Except she, too, was a Blair unit toiler long ago. So there have to be some pretty watertight boxes she can tick on the way to media regulation glory.

Daughter of a Jamaican migrant family who settled in East London? Excellent. Went to comprehensive school? Even better. And then to Cambridge? Fantastic. Worked at the World Bank, Department for International Development, ministries of justice and work and pensions? Good: though a culture and media stint might have helped. Married to Robert Chote, who runs the mighty Office for Budget Responsibility? Perfect. Two young kids? Perfection squared. Currently second permanent secretary at the Treasury? Unbelievably wonderful: never have so many boxes passed such triumphant muster.

Just one question still needs inking in, perhaps. Leading Ofcom is a big deal, but leading the Treasury is even bigger. Sir Nicholas Macpherson, the mandarin in situ, is Whitehall’s longest-serving. Why isn’t the talented second secretary heading for the top?

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