Free TV Licences: Over-75s Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Philip Hollobone
Main Page: Philip Hollobone (Conservative - Kettering)Department Debates - View all Philip Hollobone's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Free TV Licences: Over-75s
Philip Hollobone Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jeremy Wright
I think that the responsibility of the Government is to continue to discuss with the BBC how this can best be done. This is a BBC responsibility, and those are not weasel words. It is a matter of fact. It is what the statute says, and we must therefore work within the bounds of what that statute tells us. But within those boundaries I believe the BBC can do more even if we accept, as I believe we have to, that this is a BBC decision from the outset. Now that it has made this call, we need to talk to it about what more it can do to address the concerns of the older people that I know the hon. Lady and others are concerned about.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Is the truth of the matter not that both the BBC and Her Majesty’s Government are at fault over this issue? On one hand my constituents in Kettering are outraged that, having accepted the financial settlement in 2015 and an increase in the licence fee for all the rest of us, the BBC should effectively renege on that commitment by targeting the over-75s at a time when it spends zillions of pounds on overpaid presenters and other so-called stars. At the same time, both my right hon. and learned Friend and I were elected on the Conservative manifesto, which promised pensioners that they would retain their free TV licences. We have already broken one huge manifesto commitment to leave the EU on 29 March, and I suggest we do not add to that list.
Jeremy Wright
I am sure, Mr Speaker, that you will not want me to engage in that particular manifesto commitment, but let me deal with the other one. It is important, as I have said, that the BBC, which does have this responsibility, takes it seriously and makes the best judgment it can, but also that once the BBC has made that judgment we talk to it about what other things can be done in pursuit of the assistance that we all agree needs to be delivered to the most vulnerable older people in our society.