Confidence building ?

BBC DG Tony Hall has chosen The Independent to make a pledge about the World Service: "Its future is safe in our hands".

"We inherit the World Service at a particularly testing time. We are tasked with cutting £700m across the BBC by 2017, including more than £60m from BBC News. Even against that background, I am absolutely committed to seeing the World Service prosper. And beyond just protecting the World Service’s budget, I want to look to invest more to fund its digital future so that we can reach half a billion people around the world by 2022."

Read the rest. High on passion, which is good. Light on mechanics and modalities, which is still a concern, with budgetary control switching in six weeks. Perhaps we'll get more later today as Peter Horrocks, BBC Director of Global News and his finance guru Richard Thomas, give evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on the future of the service at 3.30pm.