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The BBC World Service has secured a 25 per cent increase in its government grant, after executives warned that funding constraints had left the UK struggling to counter a rise in Russian and Chinese propaganda.
The Treasury confirmed this week that it was providing “an increase in funding” to the corporation’s international service for 2025/26, but did not state the amount.
People familiar with the Budget settlement told the Financial Times that additional funding of £27mn has been agreed for next year, on top of baseline funding of £104mn this year.
Foreign secretary David Lammy has previously accused the last Tory government of having “compromised” the UK’s soft power — such as the BBC World Service — which he said was one of the nation’s “greatest strengths”.
The extra cash is designed to protect the World Service’s foreign language service provision and its “mission to deliver globally trusted media, in support of the UK’s global presence and soft power”, the government said in the Budget on Wednesday.
The BBC said that the extra money would “enable us to maintain all of our existing language services, to continue fighting disinformation around the world, and also to provide emergency information services to those in crisis, as we have recently done in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine”.
The World Service provides news to a weekly audience of 318mn people globally via radio, TV and digital formats in 42 languages, including English.
However the extra funding — which was almost three times the £10mn top up the last Tory government gave the World Service this year — has still left some BBC executives warning over the future of the service.
The BBC said the World Service was “not immune to the immense pressures facing the rest of the BBC” and that it would say more in due course about “any changes and savings we need to make to stay competitive in the face of those continuing pressures”.
BBC executives had hoped for a higher settlement — as much as £150mn a year, according to people close to the talks — after making cuts to the service over the past two years. In 2022, the BBC said that it would be forced to close radio services in 10 languages including Arabic, Persian, Chinese and Bengali to help save £28.5mn a year.
In Lebanon, Russian-backed media has since used the radio frequency previously occupied by BBC Arabic, the first foreign language radio of the British empire Service, broadcasting “unchallenged propaganda” according to BBC director-general Tim Davie.
He warned this month that cuts to the World Service had left the UK struggling to counter a rise in propaganda from countries such as Russia and China.
The majority of the World Service’s funding comes from the BBC licence fee. Its total budget last year was £369mn. However, Davie said in March that it was not sustainable to keep asking UK licence fee payers to pay more.
A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “At a time of global challenges and uncertainty, the government is committed to a successful BBC World Service.”