Campaign to decriminalise non-payment was catching on, hence the BBC's relief at news of review that will last at least a year
It comes to something when a government announcement that it intends to launch a formal review of decriminalising licence fee evasion is met with an almost audible sigh of relief from the BBC. But that is what's just happened.
The increasingly high-profile campaign started by the Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen to add a clause to the deregulation bill currently on its way through parliament to decriminalise evasion immediately had really begun to rattle the BBC. Hence the evident relief at news of a government review that will last at least a year, involve full public consultation and effectively roll the issue into the forthcoming BBC charter review process between now and the end of 2016.
The idea of decriminalising TV licence fee evasion is hardly new. After all, the idea of poor people being locked up for not being able to pay for television – I mean, it is only television – will strike most people as at least too harsh and quite possibly really wrong.
But what surprised the BBC was how Bridgen's campaign started to catch on – 150 MPs from all parties and almost daily articles across much of the press building up the issue.
Throw in a few well-timed ministerial interventions from the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, and the culture secretary, Maria Miller, and then a statement from Downing Street saying David Cameron himself thought the idea "interesting", and it was beginning to look like it might actually happen. Which for the BBC could be a disaster.
The BBC is already cash-strapped after the 2010 licence fee settlement froze the annual charge at £145.50 until 2017. As if that weren't tricky enough, the BBC was forced to accept that henceforth the licence fee would also fund the Welsh-language broadcaster S4C, the World Service (previously funded by the Foreign Office), the Caversham monitoring service, local TV infrastructure, plus provide several hundred million pounds for broadband rollout. Which meant, in a nutshell, savings elsewhere of £700m–plus a year.
The BBC estimates that a near doubling of licence fee evasion from the current rate of 5.5% of households to 10% would cost it another £200m a year. Or as the BBC's director of digital and strategy, the former Labour culture secretary James Purnell, put it, both of the BBC's children's channels, BBC Four and all of local radio (he might well have added BBC Three, but they've already chopped that).
But here, in public terms at least, the BBC, for all the genuine financial pressure, remains on weak ground. For a start the BBC does not have what one former very senior executive called "a convincing efficiency narrative". All the talk internally is of budget cuts and savings whilst in public the debate is still dominated by stories of profligacy, inefficiency and, critically, the £100m written off on a failed digital media initiative and massive executive payoffs.
And indeed it might just be those issues that have created such fertile ground for Bridgen's campaign. Getting locked up for not paying your TV licence fee is bad enough but if, had you paid it, the BBC was just going to waste it on mismanaged digital ventures or, worse, spend it on themselves, that would be truly outrageous.
But look a little closer and the issues raised by decriminalisation – both practically and in terms of the likely consequences – are pretty serious. Unlike the suppliers of other services – utilities or even pay-TV companies, for example – the BBC can't simply cut off the services it provides in response to non-payment.
So, absent a potential criminal remedy, evasion might be expected to increase significantly, increasing licence fee collection costs and requiring the majority who still do pay – and mostly willingly – for the BBC to face higher bills and/or cuts to valued services.
But when you put this problem to the proponents of the change, as I did to Bridgen on Radio 4's The Media Show, the response raises more questions than answers. It is suggested that non-payers somehow be disconnected. Easy to do potentially to customers of Sky, BT and Virgin perhaps – although they by definition are unlikely to be poor – but without shifting from licence fee funding to some form of subscription, virtually impossible to enforce elsewhere.
And if you go there then a whole host of other issues hove to view: such as, for example the BBC's historic mission – and some would argue key cultural achievement – to be universally available. Shifting to subscription funding in whole or in part is a perfectly valid debate to have, it just isn't really anything to do with poorer people struggling to pay their licence fees.
Bridgen and his colleagues have the bit between their teeth, claiming among other things that "old ladies" are being "detained by the state" for non-payment. But in fact no one – and certainly not Bridgen – knows the age, gender or anything else, it seems, about the 48 people who were locked up last year. They also accused the BBC of "bullying" and "strong-arm tactics" merely for circulating a briefing paper to MPs raising some of these questions.
Which is why the BBC was so relieved when the government stepped in possibly fearing that it too – now that it takes so much licence fee cash to fund other government policies – might become losers if licence fee evasion were to increase significantly. Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 hours ago.
It comes to something when a government announcement that it intends to launch a formal review of decriminalising licence fee evasion is met with an almost audible sigh of relief from the BBC. But that is what's just happened.
The increasingly high-profile campaign started by the Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen to add a clause to the deregulation bill currently on its way through parliament to decriminalise evasion immediately had really begun to rattle the BBC. Hence the evident relief at news of a government review that will last at least a year, involve full public consultation and effectively roll the issue into the forthcoming BBC charter review process between now and the end of 2016.
The idea of decriminalising TV licence fee evasion is hardly new. After all, the idea of poor people being locked up for not being able to pay for television – I mean, it is only television – will strike most people as at least too harsh and quite possibly really wrong.
But what surprised the BBC was how Bridgen's campaign started to catch on – 150 MPs from all parties and almost daily articles across much of the press building up the issue.
Throw in a few well-timed ministerial interventions from the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, and the culture secretary, Maria Miller, and then a statement from Downing Street saying David Cameron himself thought the idea "interesting", and it was beginning to look like it might actually happen. Which for the BBC could be a disaster.
The BBC is already cash-strapped after the 2010 licence fee settlement froze the annual charge at £145.50 until 2017. As if that weren't tricky enough, the BBC was forced to accept that henceforth the licence fee would also fund the Welsh-language broadcaster S4C, the World Service (previously funded by the Foreign Office), the Caversham monitoring service, local TV infrastructure, plus provide several hundred million pounds for broadband rollout. Which meant, in a nutshell, savings elsewhere of £700m–plus a year.
The BBC estimates that a near doubling of licence fee evasion from the current rate of 5.5% of households to 10% would cost it another £200m a year. Or as the BBC's director of digital and strategy, the former Labour culture secretary James Purnell, put it, both of the BBC's children's channels, BBC Four and all of local radio (he might well have added BBC Three, but they've already chopped that).
But here, in public terms at least, the BBC, for all the genuine financial pressure, remains on weak ground. For a start the BBC does not have what one former very senior executive called "a convincing efficiency narrative". All the talk internally is of budget cuts and savings whilst in public the debate is still dominated by stories of profligacy, inefficiency and, critically, the £100m written off on a failed digital media initiative and massive executive payoffs.
And indeed it might just be those issues that have created such fertile ground for Bridgen's campaign. Getting locked up for not paying your TV licence fee is bad enough but if, had you paid it, the BBC was just going to waste it on mismanaged digital ventures or, worse, spend it on themselves, that would be truly outrageous.
But look a little closer and the issues raised by decriminalisation – both practically and in terms of the likely consequences – are pretty serious. Unlike the suppliers of other services – utilities or even pay-TV companies, for example – the BBC can't simply cut off the services it provides in response to non-payment.
So, absent a potential criminal remedy, evasion might be expected to increase significantly, increasing licence fee collection costs and requiring the majority who still do pay – and mostly willingly – for the BBC to face higher bills and/or cuts to valued services.
But when you put this problem to the proponents of the change, as I did to Bridgen on Radio 4's The Media Show, the response raises more questions than answers. It is suggested that non-payers somehow be disconnected. Easy to do potentially to customers of Sky, BT and Virgin perhaps – although they by definition are unlikely to be poor – but without shifting from licence fee funding to some form of subscription, virtually impossible to enforce elsewhere.
And if you go there then a whole host of other issues hove to view: such as, for example the BBC's historic mission – and some would argue key cultural achievement – to be universally available. Shifting to subscription funding in whole or in part is a perfectly valid debate to have, it just isn't really anything to do with poorer people struggling to pay their licence fees.
Bridgen and his colleagues have the bit between their teeth, claiming among other things that "old ladies" are being "detained by the state" for non-payment. But in fact no one – and certainly not Bridgen – knows the age, gender or anything else, it seems, about the 48 people who were locked up last year. They also accused the BBC of "bullying" and "strong-arm tactics" merely for circulating a briefing paper to MPs raising some of these questions.
Which is why the BBC was so relieved when the government stepped in possibly fearing that it too – now that it takes so much licence fee cash to fund other government policies – might become losers if licence fee evasion were to increase significantly. Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 hours ago.