More than 125,000 people have signed a petition on the UK Parliament website calling for the abolition of the BBC TV licence.
Petitions that gather more than 100,000 signatures are debated in Parliament, but June's snap General Election seemed to put pay to any chance of this particular petition progressing any further. Just then, like a phoenix re-emerging from smouldering embers, it was announced that the petition result from the last Parliamentary session will be carried forwarded and debated in Westminster Hall on Monday, 16th October 2017. (Edit: We are now told the debate has been rescheduled to take place on Monday, 20th November 2017).
Anyone interested will be able to watch the debate live on Parliamentlive.tv. According to a second, unrelated petition response on the UK Parliament website this can be done without a TV licence, although the BBC has subsequently rejected that idea (as it would). For anyone without a valid TV licence wishing to err on the side of caution, the debate can be watched on-demand after it has finished.
Experience tells us that these debates achieve very little. The idea that the TV licence would ever be scrapped only ten months into the BBC's current ten year Charter period is a bit unrealistic. These debates do, however, give an interesting insight into the innermost workings of the BBC's TV Licensing operation. To be blunt, the BBC could never tell the same lies to Parliament that it does to its TV Licensing victims (although we seem to remember the former chair of the Public Accounts Select Committee, Dame Margaret Hodge, accusing former BBC HR boss Lucy Adams of telling lies in her evidence to the committee). There are bound to be a few interesting revelations and admissions by the BBC.
We shall be watching the debate very closely and will discuss key highlights.
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The format of the debate means there is no vote at the end - the motion at the end will be along the lines of "this house has considered the petition". The idea is the backbenchers will have their say for or against the licence fee and then a minister will respond to the points brought up. It might be that the Culture Secretary the Right Honourable Karen Bradley MP will be the minister.
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