BBC Monitoring, the UK service
that translates and analyses global media, is in danger of becoming a "hollow
shell", MPs have warned.
The government has moved responsibility for its
funding to the BBC, which the Defence Committee said had "entirely predictably"
led to cuts.
It added that BBC Monitoring was "vital" to diplomacy and
business.
The BBC said it was "confident" the service would continue to
meet the UK government's needs.
The government directly funded BBC
Monitoring until 2013, when responsibility passed to the BBC under an agreement
announced by Chancellor George Osborne in 2010.
The cross-party committee
said this had left the service exposed, with around 100 jobs set to go unde r a
re-structuring programme.
It expressed concern at plans to move
Monitoring out of its current Caversham Park headquarters in Berkshire, where it
operates alongside US counterpart Open Source Enterprise, because of potential
disruption to information-sharing.
'Catastrophic
decisions:'
Currently, Monitoring covers 25% of the globe, while Open
Source Enterprise covers the remaining 75%.
The committee's report said:
"The government uses open-source information for indicators and warnings of
areas of instability and potential threats to UK security.
"The decisions
made concerning the funding and governance of BBC Monitoring over the past
decade or so have been woefully short-sighted and catastrophically
ill-thought-out.
"A service that has the potential to be a vital tool in
opening the world to UK diplomacy and business is in grave danger of becoming a
hollow shell of its former existence."
A BBC spokeswoman said: "The media
landscape has changed vastly since the creation of BBC Monitoring in the 1930s
and we believe our planned restructure is vital to equip us for a world in which
digital skills are far more important than physical location.
"We are
confident that we will continue to meet the UK government's needs for
open-source monitoring and they have told us they are happy with our
changes."
