Tories to charge BBC with cost of TV licences for over-75s

BBC will be allowed to charge for iPlayer

GEORGE OSBORNE has launched a £650m budget raid on the BBC to help cover Britain’s benefits bill, forcing the corporation to meet the cost of free television licences for the over-75s.

Senior government sources say a deal is close that will force the BBC to take on the cost of the 4.5m licences — worth £145.50 each — from the Department for Work and *Pensions (DWP) ..............

In return, the BBC will be allowed to make up some of the lost revenue by charging for use of its iPlayer and other online catch-up services to try to stem the loss of revenue caused by people abandoning their televisions. That will return at least £150m to BBC coffers, but the £650m benefits bill represents the loss of around a fifth of the corporation’s £3.7bn licence fee income.

The details, including the timing of the change, are still under negotiation but it is likely to be phased in after 2017

What will happen if BBC funds free licences?

When the government suggested the BBC might take on the funding of TV licences for the over-75s in 2010, a substantial majority of the BBC's then-trustees threatened to resign and the idea was dropped.

But the BBC Trust is on the way out: its current chair has called for its abolition; such a threat might be rather less effective today.

Nevertheless, the arguments against the move now are the same as they were then, even if this time the government is apparently offering a sweetener.

An effective cut of £650m or one-fifth in the BBC's budget would almost certainly mean cuts in services - all of BBC Three and BBC Four, all digital radio, possibly local radio and parts of World Service radio, according to one former trustee.

Why should licence fee payers have to put up with a poorer service because of a policy first introduced by a Labour Government?

Is it right that licence fees handed over to pay for TV and radio programmes should end up instead subsidising sometimes wealthy pensioners?

Sir Christopher Bland, a former chairman of the BBC Governors, called the move "the worst form of dodgy Whitehall accounting".

He told the World this Weekend on Radio 4: "If the government thinks that over 75-year-olds need free licence fees then fine, that's government policy, not BBC policy.

"And of course, rather subtly and unattractively, it draws the BBC closer to becoming an arm of government, which has always been something that the BBC and government have resisted."

But the sweetener being offered by the chancellor has its attractions.

Last week the BBC revealed that its licence fee revenue was down by £150m a year because so many people no longer watch live television (for which you have to have a TV licence) and simply watch catch-up programmes on the iPlayer (for which a licence is unnecessary).

Mr Osborne seems to be offering a deal, perhaps to be announced in the Budget: a commitment to change the law so that iPlayer viewers also have to pay the licence fee.

The licence fee is well past its sell by date.

The BBC ought be made to go fully commercial. We have no need for a state propaganda organ these days.

So, Gidiot passes the cost of the over 75s licence to the BBC. We get this from the BBC...



I say tell them to get stuffed!

The BBC could end the licence exemption from 2020. One theory is that they will gradually raise the qualifying age from 75 in line with the increase in the state pension age. If they don't then the cost to the BBC will escalate every year as the number of over-75s increases.

Part of the new arrangement was also that the licence-money subsidy for rural broadband expansion will be phased out.