§ Mr. D. E. Thomasasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many hours a week in English and in each foreign language are broadcast by BBC external services; and what is the comparable average weekly total of domestic Welsh language radio broadcasts.
§ Mr. Alexander W. LyonThe information is as follows:
Programme hours per week 1. The number of hours broadcast each week in English and foreign languages in the BBC's External Services are: English and English by Radio 230 Hausa 7 Somali 5¼ Swahili 7 Arabic 70 Bengali 8 Burmese 7 Hindi 15¼ Nepali ¾ Persian 8¾ Sinhala 1 Tamil 1½ Urdu 8¾ Chinese— Cantonese 5¼ Standard Chinese (Kuoyu) 12½ Indonesian 8¾ Japanese 7 Malay 1¾ Thai 7 Vietnamese 8¾ French (to Europe and Africa) 42 French for Canada ¼ Maltese ½ Czech and Slovak 21¼ Hungarian 18 Polish 21¼ Finnish 8½ Greek 10½ Italian 7 Portuguese 8¾ Portuguese for Latin America 15¾ Spanish 7 Spanish for Latin America 28 Turkish 7 German 24½ Bulgarian 14 Romanian 15¾ Russian 32 Yugoslav (Serbo-Croat and Slovene) 16¼ 2. The average weekly amount of domestic radio broadcasting in the Welsh language is about 41 hours, of which the IBA provide 15 hours.