BBC monitoring service cuts could deprive spies and military of intelligence, committee chair warns

‘Cuts to the state-funded BBC’s monitoring service, which provides important open source intelligence to the UK military and security services as part of its role, could pose a risk to national security, according to Parliament’s Defence Select Committee.
In a report released Monday, committee chair Julian Lewis said that plans to cut a third of staff and begin to sell off the Reading-based monitoring service, which provides open source intelligence to the security state, were the “height of folly.”
The BBC plans to cut 100 of the 320 jobs and relocate the rest to the capital.
Lewis compared the facility at Caterham Park to the World War Two codebreaking hub at Bletchley Park, and said it was one of the “few tools still left in the government’s arsenal which can provide almost real-time information and analysis on global developments.”’
Read more: BBC monitoring service cuts could deprive spies and military of intelligence, committee chair warns