World views

There's an anxious week ahead at the BBC's World Service. Somewhere in the detail of the Spending Review documents issued on Wednesday will be a figure.  But nobody's certain what it will be.

It could be a bald statement that the service's annual grant in aid - currently £272m -  has been cut by 25% to £204m for each of the next three years.  It could be gentler - that the grant-in-aid falls by 25% over three years. It's possible all deals are given five years to reach their target, to match the Coalition's hoped for parliamentary term.

I suspect what won't be there is a figure of the number of language services to be maintained. That's too much detail for the Treasury to be bothered.  But it is important who gives that detail.  In theory, World Service strategy is set by the Foreign Office, and implemented by the BBC.  Over recent years that important distinction has been blurred both ways. It was the BBC who suggested losing some services to pay for Arabic TV; it was the Foreign Office who injected cash to pay for Persian TV.

For me, it's important that the "ownership" of the strategy goes back to Government; I don't believe it's the BBC's job to decide where there may be a democratic deficit, or an opportunity to "big up" UK plc.   The BBC can advise on audiences and platforms, but it should be the FCO who articulates the rationale and direction.  This is even more important when the World Service is now part of a "group" making BBC World, supported by ads and rather too many sponsored programmes; and the "world-facing" element of BBC Online, also taking ads.  Let's hope someone, somewhere, has come up with a clear sentence or two on the way forward, and we hear it first from William Hague.  Jobs will go, undoubtedly, but that will be easier to take if there's a credible and understandable mandate given to Peter Horrocks and his team.