Free TV Licences for Over-75s

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may correct what was said from the Labour Benches: this was post-coalition. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Foster, who was then an MP, stopped a first attempt to do this.

Does not the Minister accept that the covert way in which the BBC licence fee was settled last time was wrong: that making the BBC take on the cost of funding free TV licences for the over-75s effectively made the BBC the vehicle to deliver elements of the welfare state, and that that was inappropriate? I agree with the Statement that taxpayers want the BBC to use its licence fee income in an appropriate way to ensure that it delivers for UK audiences. That is the point: the licence fee is not public money but the public’s money. Does not the Minister agree that it is double dipping to use the public’s money to pay for government policy?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The public’s money is what the Government spend. Everything that the Government do is with taxpayers’ money, so I do not really understand the noble Baroness’s point. I should mention, as the noble Lord mentioned the Liberal Democrats, that the Liberal Democrat 2015 manifesto committed to remove the concession for higher-rate taxed pensioners. We have to be careful about what we said when. As for the point about social welfare, the agreement made in 2015 was not about tax policy; it was simply about whether the BBC should have the responsibility for the concession, and that is what it was given.