The National Union of Journalists has condemned foreign secretary William Hague’s response to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee assessment of the cuts being made at the BBC World Service.

The NUJ has described Hague’s response that the cuts were ‘challenging but fair’ as having a ‘shameful disregard for the listeners of the world and travesty of reasoned debate and argument’.

Hague also questions the BBC’s commitment to make the 16% efficiency savings that is required as a result of the Government’s decision to freeze the licence fee for the coming years.

Jeremy Dear, general secretary for the NUJ said: “The report by the Foreign Affairs Committee broadly reflected the concerns of the NUJ, commentators, institutions, international observers and broadcasting specialists. It highlighted the damaging impact of government and management cuts on the quality of the BBC World Service.

 “But even if the report had not been so sympathetic to the concerns of journalists, unions and the worldwide audience of the World Service, it was clearly the result of considerable thought and effort.

“For the Foreign Secretary to dismiss that reasoned assessment without any serious argument in favour of cutting the service is both dishonourable and dishonest.”

Dear continued to question the government’s approach to the cuts. 

“The government’s approach is indicated most clearly by Mr Hague’s response to the committee’s declaration that it will continue to monitor the World Service and its role as an important projector of the UK’s influence and ‘soft power’.

 “The Foreign Secretary dismisses this important marker of continuing parliamentary concern with the brief observation that ‘The Government welcomes the Committee’s continued interest in the work of the BBC World Service’.

“This demonstrates clearly the contempt in which the government holds both the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and the BBC World Service itself,” he concluded.

The NUJ has already begun to urge members and supporters of the World Service to contact local MPs to ask them to attend a debate on the service tomorrow in the House of Commons.