BBC Licence Fee Non-Payment (Decriminalisation for Over-75s) Bill

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

For 100 years, our country has benefited from the world-class content provided by the BBC. It is responsible for creating great TV programmes that we all enjoy and for screening the sport and live events that we all care about. But its reach goes much further than that, from providing local news to broadcasting internationally through the World Service, and from educating our children to underpinning creative industries across the UK.

The BBC is also the biggest commissioner of music, and one of the biggest employers of musicians in the country. From the Proms to the programming of Radio 3, to the world-class musicians in the BBC Singers and the BBC orchestras, the BBC is highly regarded for its music, both here and around the world. I have raised a number of issues with the BBC about protecting the position of our world-class musicians, and I think their strengths are now understood.

The value that the BBC provides is immense, and for every pound put into the BBC, it delivers back £2.63 of direct economic impact. Importantly, 50% of those benefits are to regions outside London. As a Salford MP, I appreciate the work that the BBC does from its Salford base. To fund a universal service with such breadth and impact, some sort of payment model must exist, and for many years the licence fee has served that purpose.

As we have been hearing, however, for many over-75s, paying for a TV licence is a relatively new experience. Under the previous Labour Government, the licence fee was covered for that age group, making them exempt from payment. In 2015, the BBC was handed responsibility for the policy, and following a consultation with nearly 200,000 responses, it found that it simply could not afford to absorb the £745 million that it would cost to maintain free licences for all over-75s. As a result, since 2020 free licences are restricted to over-75s in receipt of pension credit, costing the BBC a smaller, but still significant sum of £250 million a year.

For those over-75s who must now pay the fee, support in making that change has been crucial. The BBC informed all over-75s personally of the change of policy, ran a public information campaign on the availability of pension credit, phased the payment system in, and offered specialised payment plans for those moving from a free to a paid licence. Decriminalising the non-payment of the fee for that age group is not a suitable support measure. In fact, decriminalisation could make matters worse both for those in that age group, and for the BBC.

Let me look further at the issues around enforcement that we have touched on in this debate. No one wants pensioners to be put in prison for not paying their fee, and fortunately nobody—nobody at all—is imprisoned for licence-fee evasion in England and Wales. The maximum sentence for evasion alone is a fine, and custodial sentences would be imposed only in rare cases where a fine was not paid. Indeed, as the Minister has said, data shows that there are no over-75s in prison for failing to pay a TV licence fine, and prosecution of any kind is an absolute last resort, taking place only after every measure to retrieve payment has been tried. Prosecutions can take place only when it is in the public interest to do so.

As we have heard, under the alternative of the civil system, the enforcement regime has the potential to be harsher. Indeed, the current system allows the court to apply discretion by ensuring that any fines are within what is affordable for an individual to pay. A fine under the civil system would be fixed at a higher rate, and it would not be possible to take income into account, leaving the most vulnerable at risk of being unable to pay. Likewise, the current system means that over-75s leave with no criminal record and no impact to their credit score, and never see a bailiff at their door to collect the fines. Under a civil system, those protections would be lost. Therefore, although decriminalisation may present itself as a supportive measure, it would fundamentally not result in a fairer system for the over-75s.

The Minister said that he will keep enforcement under review, and I think I heard him agree that this is not always done with sensitivity. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) will appreciate that, given that his constituents have raised such issues with him, and I hope we can hear more about that. Enforcement for that age group should be done sensitively, and if it is not, we should be doing something about it.

Decriminalisation would also be worse for the BBC—the Minister has already made a similar point. It would send a message that it is okay not to pay the licence fee, and possibly lead to more people avoiding paying the fee. The BBC would then be left with no choice but to absorb the cost by cutting programmes and services, and reducing investment in the UK’s creative economy. The BBC has already faced a 30% real-terms cut to its funding in the past decade, and must make further savings of £285 million a year by 2027. By further starving the BBC of resources, we would all lose, from the 10-year-old on “BBC Bitesize” to over-75s keeping up with their local news through BBC local channels. We all rely on the BBC and its continued success.

The licence fee model might not be perfect—Labour would look at alternative public funding models when the end of the charter period approaches—but any successful funding model must be fair and it must ensure that the BBC can continue to do what it does best. Decriminalising the licence fee, as I have touched on, is not fairer than a civil system and it would come at the cost of substantial detriment to the BBC and therefore to us all. It is on that basis that Labour must oppose the Bill today.