Still waiting

The BBC's Jonathan Munro to the Public Accounts Committee last week on Government funding for the World Service. "We are sitting here on 8 January and we still do not have our budget settlement for the new financial year from April, which is less than three months away. Getting budget planning in time
relies on a number of things to be true that are out of our control. Luckily, we think we are moving to a place with the FCDO—with whom we have an excellent relationship, by the way—where we will have a longer-term budget settlement. We would really welcome that: it would make it a lot easier to deliver against forecasts."

Later: "One of the things we have said to the Foreign Office—and we have said this over a number of years; this isn’t a new message and, as you know, there have been a number of different Foreign Secretaries and Ministers in recent years—is that we believe that the freeze in the licence fee under the previous Government for, effectively, two and a half years, because the licence-fee rise in the third year was below inflation, had the unintended consequence of cutting the available funds for the World

Service."

"I do not believe that anybody sat there and thought, “We’ll freeze the licence fee and damage the World Service deliberately.” I honestly do not believe anyone thought that; I think it was an unintended consequence. In order to plug that gap, we needed an increase in what was known at the time as grant in aid; I just call it—to Rupert Lowe’s point—taxpayers’ money. It is central Government money. Some of that money can mitigate the need for cuts in the World Service against the backdrop of further

spending restrictions in the BBC as a whole. Until we know what that settlement is, it is really hard—in fact, I would say impossible—to accurately give you an assessment of what we will need that money to do

for us."