The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has confided in Tory colleagues that the TV licence fee is "outdated" and "on the way out", according to an exclusive in today's Sunday Express.
Details are still patchy on this one, but the story broke just hours after Mr Osborne took the unusual step of announcing a second annual budget statement in early July. The Government has previously pledged to reduce inheritance tax and freeze rail fares and the TV licence fee.
The current freeze on the £145.50 TV licence fee ends with the renewal of the BBC Charter on 31st December 2016, but is expected to be extended well into the next Charter period.
Mr Osborne's latest comments, if reported accurately, signify a shift in his stance only a month ago when he gave an interview to Radio Times magazine.
Back then, when the prospect of a Conservative majority looked unlikely, Mr Osborne said there were no plans to scrap the TV licence fee. Skip forward a month, with a strengthened Conservative mandate, and the Chancellor's position appears to have hardened.
Whether or not there is substance to these latest rumours, a pattern is emerging whereby the Government is firming its resolve to tackle the inadequacies of the current BBC funding model.
There is no better indication of this than the recent appointment of John Whittingdale, an archcritic of the BBC, as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. That can only be a positive move for anyone without their nose in the BBC trough.
The Sunday Express also confirms that Mr Whittingdale is a member of the right-leaning think-tank The Freedom Association, which is actively campaigning for the abolition of the TV licence fee.
6 comments:
Minor correction: the article states that John Whittingdale is a member of the Freedom Association, not George Osbourne.
Well spotted and corrected.
Thanks for the heads up.
Apparently Osborne's TFA membership application is still being processed!
What's really going to spook the BBC is the sudden increase in households without a TV. This means a big drop in their income and there's nothing they can do about it until the new Royal Charter.
I don't think they will try to recoup the money by harsher enforcement methods because the adverse publicity that would generate at a rather ticklish time for them politically.
I worry that the people thinking about the license's replacement only seem to consider the idea that everyone currently needs a license (and those who don't are evading it) so therefore the replacement had better cater for everyone too.
This neglects the large number of people who currently do not need a license - these people never get mentioned, it's always "the correctly licensed" and "the evaders". Even when the media reports on how to avoid the license it's reported incorrectly as "a loophole".
Good on Osborne but does he fall into the same trap of not even understanding that many people are legally license free and simply have no need of one no matter what form it takes?
I see that the petition to end the TV Licence on the 38degrees website is closing in on 150,000 signatures:
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/end-the-bbc-licence-fee
WOIRA instructions to the BBC have increased massively in the last year - almost as many have been made in the last year as in the previous 6 years combined. The BBC have stopped accepting WOIRA instructions in Scotland, however, (the legal system there differs from the rest of the UK) presumably because they've had a surge of WOIRA instructions there as well.
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