A Government Minister has compared the way that TV Licensing both investigates and prosecutes alleged licence evaders to the way the Post Office investigated and prosecuted hundreds of innocent subpostmasters in the Horizon scandal.
Andrew Griffith MP, the Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation, made the comparison in a recent blog article and newsletter to residents in his Arundel and South Downs constituency.
The Post Office Horizon scandal was recently catapulted into the headlines thanks to the screening of acclaimed ITV drama "Mr Bates vs. The Post Office" (aff. link).
Between 1999 and 2015 the Post Office prosecuted hundreds of subpostmasters for stealing from the business, when actually the deficiencies were due to well-known bugs in the Horizon computer system.
Despite knowing there were issues, rather than acknowledge the fact there was a problem the Post Office continued to prosecute innocent subpostmasters regardless.
Writing on his blog, the MP said: "Last year the BBC spent £136 million collecting its licence fee with enforcement contracted to the private outsourcing company Capita.
"They employ an army of more than 1,000 people to enforce licence fee payment, including door-to-door enforcement officers and solicitors to prosecute cases.
"Licence fee evasion cases are prosecuted by the BBC's TV Licensing arm. Last week, Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said they should instead be dealt with by the independent Crown Prosecution Service.
"He drew comparisons to the Horizon scandal, in which Post Office investigators gathered the evidence for their own prosecutions."
The Crown Prosecution Service was established in 1985 to overcome the clear conflict of interest that arose from the police investigating and prosecuting its own cases.
The CPS will only prosecute cases where the evidential and public interest tests are met, but recent experience shows that TV Licensing - despite claiming to follow CPS prosecution standards - ignores the public interest by prosecuting the most meritless of cases.
The TV Licensing Blog has long been concerned about the conflict of interest between TV Licensing investigating and prosecuting alleged instances of TV licence evasion. Quite simply, more prosecutions means more TV licence sales, means more revenue generated for the gluttonous BBC.
We are also extremely concerned that Capita TV Licensing enquiry officers receive bonus payments for any TV licence sales they generate - sales that can only be generated if a prosecution interview also takes place.
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