World Service questions

Odds and ends from the Foreign Affairs Select Committee report on BBC World Service cuts.

The MPs estimate that it would take just 0.35% of the DFID budget to reverse the most damaging service closures.  The MPs are asking the BBC to come back with a note about improving commercial income, with figures attached. And the MPs want the Government to come clean on the "modelling" of a transfer of the funding responsibility that apparently happened in the summer of 2010.....

We recommend that, in its response to this Report, the Government should clarify exactly when and by whom such a transfer was first mooted in discussions between the Government and the BBC, who initiated those discussions, and to what extent the BBC's "modelling" work and internal discussions about a transfer carried out prior to October 2010 were encouraged by the Government.