Petition Department for International Development to fund BBC World Service

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office will lose its budget for funding the BBC World Service by 2014 and it will then have to be paid for out of the licence fee, which is itself frozen in cash terms.
We the undersigned want the Government to rethink the plan and instead hand over responsibility for funding it to the Department for International Development.
Britain is in danger of losing its voice in the world, and people all over the world are in danger of losing their only access to independent news and vital educational resources, if the World Service has to compete for funds against BBC services which are more directly accessible to UK residents.
While every other department suffers under the austerity cuts, the DFID is seeing massive increases in its budget. The amount (£280 million) being spent on aid to India and which the Indian government says it no longer wants, is almost exactly what the BBC World Service costs to run.