Speeches by Whittingdale.

“I completely understand that. The Green Paper contains quite a lot about the BBC’s involvement in providing coverage in the nations of the United Kingdom, and indeed in the languages of the United Kingdom. If the hon. Gentleman believes, as I do, that one of the principal purposes of the BBC is to provide content that …”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered Government proposals for renewal of the BBC Charter. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. It is also a pleasure—although not wholly surprising—that the debate is so well attended. We may struggle to get everybody in; I will do my best to help. I am…”

“Whether or not it is value for money is a debate that the BBC has advanced for as long as I have been debating the BBC. The question is: what do we compare it with? Is 25p value for money, or is £1.50 value for money? Unless it is decided what the BBC should be doing, we cannot determine that. The other big factor is t…”

“I agree that children’s television is incredibly important, and it is a matter of real concern that fewer and fewer commercial channels are investing in children’s TV. It was for that reason that, at the time of the last charter review, we set up something called the young audiences content fund, funded by the licence …”

“We were told in the autumn.”

“We are up to seven now.”

“The Government’s Green Paper on the future of the BBC, which I will be debating in Westminster Hall in about two hours’ time, has a specific section on the World Service in which it talks about considering the way forward for funding. As you will know, the BBC are pressing very hard for the Foreign Office to take back …”

“Can I just ask you about the principle surrounding the definition of disinformation? There are core examples, like that MH17 was full of corpses or was shot down by a Ukrainian aircraft, which demonstrably is false information. But we discovered when we were looking, for instance, in Montenegro and Moldova, that the pr…”

“I thank you, Mrs Harris, the Minister and all Members who participated this afternoon. The fact that there are so many present—to my regret, I suspect a lot have had to curtail their remarks due to the time limit—demonstrates the importance of this subject. I welcome the Minister’s assurance that there will be further …”

“On a similar theme, possibly the greatest asset that we have propagating truth and countering disinformation is the BBC World Service. I raised that with the Foreign Secretary when she came before us just before Christmas. At that stage, she was not in a position to give us any information about future funding of the W…”

“If you could. I suggested to the previous Foreign Secretary that the UK could take back the chair of the coalition in conjunction with another country. He was quite interested in that, so I hope that is still something to be considered.”

“No, I do not. I suspect the hon. Lady is referring to the board member for England, who I believe has outstanding experience in the field of BBC editorial independence; he spent a brief time in politics. It is worth remembering that the political appointees over many years have come from both sides of the House. There …”

“My hon. Friend perfectly illustrates why I do not think it is realistic at the moment. Until we reach the point at which everybody in the UK can access TV online—I recognise that that is a bigger challenge for my hon. Friend’s constituents than for those in many other parts of the country—it is not realistic, but we sh…”

“One of the most effective ways of countering disinformation is through properly resourced professional media. The UK was a founding partner of the Media Freedom Coalition and has a strong record of supporting independent media, but there is a perception that it is less of a priority in the Foreign Office than it once w…”

“I have got six.”

“I visited the S4C headquarters, and I am a strong supporter of S4C, which is often overlooked in debates about the licence fee. Of course, it is funded by the licence fee, and that is something we sought to preserve when I had responsibility for it. It needs to be taken into account. I was glad to see that the Green Pa…”

“Minister, you mentioned Ukraine as being a place where the information war is perhaps at its height, both in terms of seeking to undermine morale within Ukraine and to undermine the President, but also globally in trying to detach countries from support. It features specifically as an article within the 100-year partne…”

“When we were in France, we talked to VIGINUM. They said specifically that they did not seek to counter argument, but were actually focusing on the propagation and amplification through bots and artificial means.”

“The Maduro and Chávez regime was characterised by widespread human rights abuse, criminality and economic destitution, and many Venezuelans are rightly and understandably celebrating its end. However, I have to say to the Foreign Secretary that after more than half an hour, it is still not clear whether the UK Governme…”

“Although I welcome this announcement, which directly contradicts what the Secretary of State told me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) on the day that the House rose for Christmas, is the Minister aware that a significant number of my constituents who farm in the Dengie peni…”