Free TV Licences: Over-75s

Debate between Neil Gray and Jeremy Wright

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

As much as they try, Tory Ministers cannot wash their hands of this terrible decision. A Tory Chancellor, George Osborne, proposed handing responsibility for the licence fee concession to the BBC as part of a disastrous charter for the BBC. The Government knew exactly what they were doing and they knew that this would be the result.

The right hon. Member for Tatton (Ms McVey) has made the matter a Tory leadership issue, even if I have more chance of scoring the winner tonight in Belgium than she has of becoming Prime Minister. Every single Tory leadership candidate must answer the question: “Will you bring the TV licence fee concession back to the Government?” That is the only way pensioners will avoid losing out—some 300,000 in Scotland; 3,000 in Airdrie and Shotts. Age Scotland reckons that 76,000 pensioners in Scotland do not claim pension credit even though they are entitled to it.

In the light of that decision, what consideration has the Minister made of funding the BBC to reverse it? How does this decision square with the 2017 Tory party manifesto commitment that helped to elect the Minister, which promised to, and I quote from page 66,

“maintain”

pensioner benefits,

“including free bus passes, eye tests, prescriptions and TV licences, for the duration of this Parliament”.

The Tories promised pensioners that their free TV licences would remain. They must honour that promise.

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Gentleman says that we should ask Conservative party leadership contenders whether they will bring this obligation back to the taxpayer. I hope that he will ask the same question of Opposition Front Benchers, and not just that question but the follow-up question: if they intend to do that, where will they find the money to pay for it? Will they cut elsewhere? Will they borrow more? That follow-up question must be asked of all those who argue that we should reverse course on what Parliament voted for in 2017.

The hon. Gentleman says that the Government knew what they were doing when this arrangement was made in 2015. I suggest that the BBC also knew what it was doing. It is important to remember what the BBC said at the time. Let met quote what the director-general of the BBC said on the “Today” programme after the deal was done in 2015:

“The Government’s decision here to put the cost of the over-75s on us has been more than matched by the deal coming back for the BBC.”

That is what he said. If we all enter these deals with our eyes open—we all should—we should all be responsible for the decisions we take.