Culture, Media and Sport committee

Debate between John Whittingdale and Steve Rotheram

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for both points. The collection mechanism currently costs about £100 million. If we moved to a different system, perhaps by attaching it to council tax, we could probably provide an incentive to councils to take on that responsibility and still save money. His point about magistrates courts is entirely right, as there are about 150,000 convictions every year for failure to have a licence, and that clogs up the courts. It is one of the many reasons why there is a strong case for decriminalisation.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I find myself in the invidious position of agreeing with something the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, which was that the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) should be able to stand to be Chair of the Committee again—everything else he said was barmy. He actually argued that we should be looking at a voluntary subscription model. I am sure that would work well, because everyone likes paying taxes. The BBC would not exist in its current form under his proposal. We visited several European cities and looked at their models. Despite what has been said by those on the Government Benches, the public service broadcasters in Europe that have moved to a hypothecated tax system, such as the household levy, actually saw the amount of revenue they received increase. Does the Chair of the Committee agree that the model that we have suggested would strike a balance and give some time for a review of what might be better for taking the BBC into the next part of the 21st century?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has just illustrated that—I think this is true of all Select Committees—although there might be strong disagreements within the Committee, they are conducted on a very friendly basis. I entirely agree that we were impressed by the model that has been adopted by Germany. Rather to Germany’s surprise, it has led to an increase in revenue, because the previous system had an even higher level of evasion than it had realised.