TV Licence Fee

Debate between Helen Jones and Julian Knight

Monday 20th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is right. It is a bit like Churchill’s saying that democracy is the worst possible system we could have—until we look at all the others.

Some people say that the BBC should become a streaming service, but that would not allow it to fund the programmes it is required to—for minority interests, for the regions, for different language services and so on. There is also advertising, which I will come to in a moment, but I make the point now that funding programmes through advertising is not free, as many people seem to think; it is actually added to the cost of everything we buy. As such, it is the most regressive tax possible. I do not watch much ITV, for example, but I am willing to pay for it because I believe in diversity in the media. I pay for it when I purchase goods in the shops.

I think that the difficulty of finding an alternative to the licence fee has actually helped to increase support for it over the years. A recent BBC consultation showed that 75% of people were in favour of retaining the licence fee. Of course, that is from a self-selecting group—people who are interested in the BBC and respond to its consultations—but other polls have also shown a majority in favour. A recent Ipsos MORI poll from this year showed that 49% of people are in favour of funding the BBC through the licence fee, compared with 27% who want it funded by advertising and 23% who want it to be a subscription service.

It is true that a poll in The Daily Telegraph a few years ago—in 2013, I think—showed 70% in favour of either abolishing or reducing the licence fee, but that conflates two things and is not a reasonable guide. If asked, most of us would like the cost of anything we pay for to be reduced, and would say so. In fact, other polls show support for the licence fee actually rising over time—it was at 28% in 1989, 32% in 2004, and 49% this year.

The problem with suggesting that the BBC should be funded by advertising is that it would be fishing in the same pool as the commercial broadcasters. There is only a limited amount of money available, especially as more advertising moves online, and I very much doubt that the revenue would be there to fund the kinds of programmes we have now. Another important point is that advertisers—quite reasonably, from their point of view—want spots during shows that are guaranteed to be popular, but a public sector broadcaster such as the BBC has to do more than that; it has to be free to experiment and to produce programmes for minority interests. That broad sweep of BBC programmes is probably the reason why 95% of people in this country watch it at some point or another. Indeed, despite the competition, it is still the largest media provider for adults, including, very surprisingly, young adults.

There are many programmes that I do not think would even be made without public service broadcasting. I cannot see a commercial company producing, for instance, a cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays, as the BBC did, or providing broadcasts of opera or ballet. I am reluctant to offend the Opposition Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), who is a noted opera buff, but opera is still a minority interest. No commercial broadcaster would organise and broadcast the Proms, which is the largest classical music festival in the world.

The BBC has to be able to innovate, whether in developing the iPlayer or producing different kinds of programmes. Some of those programmes will fail, and I and other Members here will not like some others, but they are an important part of maintaining diversity in the media. Indeed, if we do not want bland uniformity, an organisation that can encompass Radio 4 and Radio 6 Music and make programmes varying from “EastEnders” to “The Sky at Night” is an important thing to preserve.

Another important point about the licence fee is that it helps to preserve BBC independence. It protects the BBC—most of the time, at least—from political interference and stops it being subject to the demands of advertisers or of an overweening proprietor; colleagues can name their own media mogul.

That is particularly important when it comes to news. The BBC is the most watched news provider in the country, with 77% of adults watching BBC News at least once a week. In a time when trust in institutions is declining, it is still the most trusted news provider— 57% of people trust it, and the nearest rival is on 11%. It maintains a network of correspondents all around the world and is trusted not just in this country but abroad. Many people trust BBC News. The BBC World Service, which is largely funded by the licence fee, does an enormous amount to bolster the prestige of this country abroad.

People ask whether I have criticisms of BBC News. Of course I do. I think far too much time is spent on interviewers repeating things. We hear something from someone in the studio, then they go to someone standing outside in the cold, and the handover of, “What more can you tell us?” is usually met in my house by a shout of, “Nothing at all!” It is far too London-centric. It still operates as if a problem on a London rail line is of interest to the whole country, or a few flakes of snow falling on the capital constitutes a national disaster. More importantly, it has gone to believing that balance means just interviewing two people of different views. There is not enough probing of those people to try to get at the facts.

Having said that, at least I know when I am watching BBC News that they are trying to get to the truth, however imperfectly. In an age of Fox News and alternative facts, that is worth having. Moreover, in the times in which we live, when there are attempts to intervene in and influence votes—a lot of it coming from Russia and other providers—having an independent news provider is essential to a functioning democracy. I would pay my licence fee for that alone, frankly. At 40p a day, which is what it works out at, I do not think it can be considered onerous.

The BBC is now doing an enormous amount to boost creative industries in the regions. Cardiff has the Drama Village, and Media City in Salford has been a great success.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a really forthright and excellent speech. She mentioned BBC spend across the regions and its investment. One area where I think the BBC is failing is the west midlands, where we have seen an average spend of £12.50 for each licence fee. Although I know things look rosier from Warrington North and Manchester, there is still a feeling of a deficit in areas such as my own.

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. There is much more to do, and I will come to that in a moment.

Media City has been a huge success and has boosted other creative industries in the region, although it took some time to convince certain people that there are nice places to live that are not in London and that northerners do not keep coal in the bath and ferrets up their trousers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is right; we need continually to scrutinise the BBC and what it offers.

The BBC needs to have much more programming coming from the regions and to do much more to increase the diversity of its staff. I am very pleased when the BBC tells me that its apprentices in engineering, media and production come overwhelmingly from families where the parents have not been to university, but there are only 230 of them. More needs to be done to ensure that its journalists, presenters and, most of all, its producers and commissioning editors reflect the diversity of this country, and to break the charmed circle where people go from Oxford and Cambridge to the BBC; and not because those are bad people, but because a national broadcaster has to reflect the different experiences, ways of looking at things and outlooks of people in the regions and nations of this country.

When the BBC says that it has reduced management costs, I am pleased to hear it, but we also know that it has a real problem with the gender pay gap, which needs to be addressed. Even more importantly, pay at the bottom of the BBC pyramid is often very low. People who want to move into broadcasting need to be able to do so without having to rely on families for support, so that they can make a career and so that people from different backgrounds can begin a career at the BBC.

Nevertheless, I still think that the licence fee presents value for money. Strides have been made in ensuring that more of it is collected. A National Audit Office report earlier this year showed that the amount of money collected had gone up and that complaints had halved since 2010, but let us be clear that it is still expensive to collect. That is why the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) is right to say that we have to keep examining it and looking at alternatives.

Some £162 million was spent on collection in 2014, despite the fact that the licence fee remained static between 2010 and 2016. Evasion is running at between 6.2% and 7.2%. That costs the rest of us between £250 million and £290 million a year. Because of that, there are people who argue quite passionately that not paying the licence fee should be decriminalised. I thought long and hard about this before coming to the debate. I think, on balance, that I would not support that, because it is simply likely to increase evasion. Indeed, when David Perry QC reviewed this, he said that it

“carries the risk of an increase in evasion and would involve significant cost to the taxpayer and those who pay the licence fee.”

I do not want people who do pay their dues to be penalised because of those who do not. People who worry about the criminalisation of not paying the licence fee are often more worried about sentencing for it, which is a different issue. I do not—nor, I suspect, does anyone else—want to see very poor people jailed for not paying their licence fee.

[Julian Knight]

The hon. Lady is making more excellent points. One thing that people have a difficulty with is the fact that licence fees take up a great deal of court time. How does she think we could get around that?

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, but it would be an argument for never prosecuting anyone for anything, because everything uses up court time. I am not sure that it is a real argument. I am much more convinced by the costs that people who do pay would incur if evasion went up. That already costs people quite a lot of money.

The fundamental question in all this is whether we believe in public service broadcasting. I do. I think it is a public good, and we finance many things because they are a public good. Some people do not want to pay for them. I remember a gentleman who told me during the election campaign that he did not see why he should pay taxes for the education system, because he did not have any children. “They pay your pension,” is the answer to that one. We get such comments all the time.

I think that we get a good service from the BBC. We think that our television is terrible, until we go abroad and look at what is provided there. We do not realise how good the BBC camera operatives are, until we try to watch rugby or football from somewhere else, where they are not as good, and we miss the goals because they are up at the other end of the pitch. We think that BBC News has its problems, until we are trapped somewhere where the only English language service available is CNN, which seems to be designed for people with the attention span of a gnat.