BBC boss warns of Russian and Chinese propaganda after World Service cuts

The UK government paid for the World Service in full until 2014, when it handed over most of the cost to the BBC.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office currently pays £104m a year towards the World Service’s total budget of £334m.

The service reaches 320 million people a week across radio, TV and digital output.

In 2022, the corporation decided to stop broadcasting on radio in 10 languages, and to close more than 380 World Service jobs.

“We haven’t closed a lot of language services,” Mr Davie told Radio 4, saying the cuts that have been made have been a result of “tight funding settlements, and there’s only so much you can ask of the UK licence fee payer to pay for language services”.

“For decades this was funded by government,” Mr Davie continued.

“There are very clear examples, where we’ve taken away BBC Arabic on radio, for instance… [and] others have come in [such as] Russian-backed media coming into Lebanon.

“I’ve got other examples where you see China and Russia deliberately spending billions of dollars on that strategic objective.”

He added: “This has to be a matter long term for the central government decision-making to say, ‘OK, we have to, as a country, invest’, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to charge all of this to the UK licence fee payer.

“It is a strategic decision and one I think we should value.”