Seasonal

The BBC's Christmas card from the Commons Defence Select Committee doesn't mince words. Here are some highlights....

"The decisions made concerning the funding and governance of BBC Monitoring over the past decade or so have been woefully short-sighted and catastrophically ill thought-out. A service that has the potential to be a vital tool in opening the world to UK diplomacy and business is in grave danger of becoming a hollow shell of its former existence."

"The vagueness of the future location arrangements for BBC Monitoring, in contrast to the precision of the existing specialised facilities, leads us inexorably to the conclusion that the BBC has made up its mind that the Monitoring Service at Caversham has to go, regardless of the absence of any definite blueprint for the infrastructure which will replace it. Whether this is primarily for ideological or financial reasons is unclear, but the BBC seems firmly set on appeasing the criticisms in the 2014 Newsnight attack on BBC Monitoring while trying to make money from the sale and development of Caversham Park. "

"We note that Francesca Unsworth [Director BBC World Service Group] and Sara Beck [Director BBC Monitoring] were concerned about any public reference to the work that BBC Monitoring does—and has always done—in supplying open source information to UK intelligence agencies. There is nothing secret or clandestine about such work and the way in which it is carried out. It is a measure of how vulnerable the BBC has made the Monitoring Service, by over-reliance on overseas staff, that such hyper-sensitivity is considered appropriate by its own management."