Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Birt and Lord Maxton

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 29th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

Can I just be marginally controversial? I accept the first amendment, which would establish a BBC licence fee commission, but the time has come when we have to look at the licence fee itself. We should remember that the licence fee was established way back in the days of Lord Reith—an awful man, but that is beside the point—based on the fact that you had one broadcasting unit in your house. The licence fee is for the house, not the individual, yet I stand here today with at least three devices in my pockets which allow me to view or listen to broadcasts by the BBC or, in fact, by any other organisation that cares to broadcast.

The time has really come when we must look at whether or not we have one licence fee for one household, which could include the very poorest single woman or man living alone in their house with one television or one radio to listen to. They pay exactly the same sum of money as another household with five people in it, all of whom have different devices. There are now four of us living in my household and each room has a television in it and a radio, we have radio in the cars, television on iPads and phones, radio on this, television on that—we have too many, maybe. But the same licence fee covers everything. It is the same licence fee for everybody, whatever—and I am not even talking about hotels or boarding houses or whatever else we can include with them. It is interesting to note that the Government themselves, when they looked at the licence fee, changed it to a live or nearly live licence fee. It is nearly live of course because if you watch television on your iPad, it is about 30 seconds behind, so it is not directly live. So this is the first thing that has to be said: it is time that this commission looked at the whole of the licence fee, not just the level of it.

Secondly, and lastly, this is a tax imposed upon everybody and we are entitled to know exactly how that money is spent by the BBC. I notice that an ex-director of the BBC is hoping to get into this debate —we know what his salary is and we know the salaries of every member of staff on the managerial side, but we do not know how much is paid to Mr John Humphrys, for instance, or to anybody else on the news side of it. I think that the BBC ought to be completely covered by the Freedom of Information Act, which is something that the commission could look at.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, it is hard to improve on the excellent summary by the noble Lord, Lord Best, of the glaring inadequacies of the last two licence fee settlements—the infamous midnight raids. I would add only one thing: it is important to recognise that in neither instance was the motive of the Government to do down the BBC, rather it was simply unscrupulous pragmatism, switching responsibility to the BBC for paying for services that had previously been funded by government. In both instances, the Government did this because they did not want to take the political hit of taking something away—the ill-considered gift of a previous Government of free licences for the over-75s, might I say—nor did they want to take the financial hit of continuing to fund the services for which they were switching responsibility.

In both instances, the Government were completely oblivious to the consequences for the funding of the BBC and the knock-on consequences for every kind of service. This is government at its worst, frankly. We all understand how it happened, but it was ill considered and Britain deserves better. There needs to be a proper, considered process to set the licence fee which takes, as others have said, every kind of circumstance into account before the licence fee is set. I strongly support this amendment.