Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many pensioners have been prosecuted for non-payment of the TV Licence fee in each of the last three years.

The requirement to hold, and pay for, a TV Licence is set out in the Communications Act 2003 and the Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004.

The Ministry of Justice currently publishes the number of prosecutions, convictions and sentencing outcomes for the non-payment of TV licence fees annually as part of their criminal justice statistics quarterly publications, which can be viewed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly

Figures for each year since 2005 up to 2022 are available in the Outcomes by Offence data tool, and can be found in the following dataset:

• 2018-2022: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1118314/outcomes-by-offence-june-2022.xlsx

To view the relevant figures in these tables, select ‘191A Television licence evasion’ in the Offence filter. These figures can be refined further by age to identify an age range of 70+, it is impossible to provide the data for 'pensioners' as that is a diverse group that cannot be filtered purely by age.

The data for individuals aged 70+ are the following:

• ​2022 - 260 proceeded against & 217 sentenced

• 2021 - 238 proceeded against & 207 sentenced

• 2020 - 329 proceeded against & 288 sentenced

Alternative data does also show no Over 75s have been prosecuted and that none of the prosecutions have resulted in custodial sentences.