Informing the world

Parliament's foreign affairs select committee is back in action this week after a hiatus for the July 4 general election. It looks like its joining forces with its Culture and International Development peers to hold a joint mega session on how the UK needs to up its game in the sphere of global (mis) information.

Emily Thornberry is the new chair and among the members is Abtisam Mohamed , the first MP of Yemeni descent.

That heritage was relevant to the inquiry into UK soft power that the committee is conducting. I was in the stalls on Tuesday as Ms Mohamed was among committee members asking about the closure of BBC Arabic radio. Even the BBC director general has acknowledged an own goal as British adversaries have taken up the medium-wave frequencies of the Arabic service in Lebanon, for example.

Jamie Angus , the former director of the BBC World Service, said the move to axe the radio service and its Farsi equivalent was counter-productive, particularly at a time of digital transformation when the UK needed to keep pace with its best-funded rivals.

"The World Service should be thinking about how to do transformational new technologies like AI," Mr Angus said. "The demographics in the Middle East are extraordinary. You have very young populations growing in particular in these conflict-affected areas, including in Palestine-Gaza and other countries in the region.

"People will pick and choose between providers and they'll know what the source is that they're getting – and understand the assumptions behind it – but they'll kind of graze amongst multiple different providers, including BBC Arabic."

A day earlier the committee heard a similar message of retreat from Philip Barton, the head civil servant at the Foreign Office. The massive cuts, mostly notably to international development spending, have had a significant impact on Britain’s “soft power”.

“In some quarters we were seen as slightly having withdrawn from that area, where we were global leaders in that space,” Mr Barton told the committee, adding that at least in some areas there was rebuilding. “I think we're now stepping back into that effectively. We've lost a bit of capability and we're rebuilding that … and I think we are regaining some lost ground.”

The recent budget contained an additional spending boost for the World Service.

Starmer's travels

After multiple trips -- most recently to the G20 in Brazil and Cop29 in Azerbaijan -- Keir Starmer is turning his attention to the Gulf in December.

The prime minister will undertake a GCC trip next month during which Britain hopes to attract investment from the Gulf states. Regional official expect Starmer to discuss pressing issues including the conflict in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon.

Qatar's Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani will visit Britain from Dec 3-4. He will be hosted by King Charles and Queen Camilla at Buckingham Palace.

Britain's trade ministers visited the Gulf in September to try to advance negotiations towards a free trade deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Britain's Business and Trade Department estimates a free trade deal with the GCC could boost the UK economy by ￡1.6b.

Future industry

Remember the old saw that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role in the world? Here's the thing. Even on the new frontier of the semiconductor race, this is true today.

Britain has fallen behind the rest of the world in that race, not only losing out to the US and Asia but even trailing in Europe. In this strategically critical growth market, the UK has no broad, large-scale maker able to go head-to-head with Infineon in Germany, NXP in the Netherlands and the Franco-Italian STMicroelectronics.

Britain did well with an outfit called Arm , whose processor is used in mobile phones and other electronic devices, but the country lacked the breadth and capacity to make this a cornerstone of a new Silicon Valley.

This week Chris Blackhurst picks up on a Policy Exchange report that recommends the government jumps in to build UK capacity in compound semiconductors.

What’s missing is an open-access foundry that could “play the same sort of role for firms that design or make compound semiconductors as silicon-based foundries play in Europe, the US and Asia." Read the write-up here .