§ Mr. D. E. Thomasasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what public expenditure cutbacks, if any, are envisaged in 1976–77 and 1977–78 for BBC external broadcasting and monitoring services.
§ Mr. EnnalsFor 1976–77 the BBC external broadcasting and monitoring services, as part of the overseas information programme, will be required to reduce their current expenditure on goods and services by 11 per cent. This is in accordance with the Chancellor of the Exchequer's statement made in his budget speech of 15th April 1975, and is applicable to public expenditure for nearly all civil programmes.
The level of expenditure for 1977–78 is still under consideration.
§ Mr. D. E. Thomasasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many staff are currently employed in the running of BBC external and monitoring services by country; and if he will estimate the annual expenditure involved in staff salaries and in living and other relevant expenses.
§ Mr. EnnalsThe total staff of the BBC external services at 30th September 1975, including the monitoring service, was approximately 3,400 and the total annual staff and associated expenses at that date were £15,200,000.
The following numbers of staff, including locally engaged personnel, are employed overseas:
Malaysia 115 Ascension Island 35 Lebanon 16 Kenya 16 Hong Kong 7 Argentina 5 Singapore 4 Berlin 3 Austria 1 Egypt 1 Spain 1 Total 204 The majority of staff employed in the United Kingdom cannot be attributed to 138W specific countries or language services. Those who can are as follows:
Arabic 86 Bengali 10 Brazilian 15 Bulgarian 18 Burmese 9 Chinese 29 Czech 30 French 60 Finnish 12 German 58 Greek 15 Hausa 13 Hebrew 2 Hindi 16 Hungarian 24 Italian 15 Indonesian/Malay 17 Japanese 12 Nepali 1 Persian 15 Polish 28 Romanian 22 Russian 33 Sinhala 1 Somali 9 Spanish/Portuguese 22 Spanish (Latin American) 22 Swahili 12 Tamil 1 Thai 9 Turkish 12 Urdu 12 Vietnamese 14 Yugoslavia 22 Total 676 The World Service in English employs 144 persons.