BBC Funding

Julian Knight Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I have no idea how anyone could make the leap from “let’s have a debate and a discussion in the House about how the future funding looks” to “privatisation”. It’s just—I have no further comment.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

Speaking strictly personally, I welcome the freeze, and the overt commitment to wean the BBC off the licence fee. As Lord Grade said on the “Today” programme this morning, nearly £160 is nothing to Gary Lineker, but it is a lot to our constituents. I and the House would like more details please about whether the licence fee will stop in 2028, or be phased out. The latter, in my view, gives the best chance of preserving the BBC’s status in our national culture. How will moving to alternative funding models work given, first of all, the paucity of broadband coverage, with old technology such as Freeview being embedded in the system? Will the central Government funding that has been mooted stand up legally, and also measure the key issue of impartiality?

[Ms Dorries]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and support on the freeze, but I take issue with the point about paucity of broadband. Some 97% of homes in the UK have superfast broadband—[Interruption.] As I said, 97% of homes have superfast broadband, and we are rolling out gigabit. As I said in my statement, someone in a house in Cumbria can download five videos—five movies—in five different rooms in the house. We do not have a paucity. On whether the licence fee will be phased out and what a future funding model will look like, those discussions and analyses have not even begun, but all Members of the House should, and will, be part of those discussions. I imagine that the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee will be doing very important work on the issue moving forward, in terms of establishing a future funding model, and that work will continue in the future.