The BBC’s latest comedy? Giving away TV licences for free

Given the BBC is facing a $10bn lawsuit from the office of Donald J Trump, you’d think those with its best interests at heart would be looking for ways to make it more money, not spray it around like confetti. That’s what makes the news that benefits claimants could receive free television licences under sweeping BBC reforms being considered by Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, so baffling.

We are told the government is looking at how changes to the licence fee “will impact different household budgets”, and working on a new funding system that “better accounts for different household situations”.

Please tell me how those who are already feeling punch drunk from Rachel Reeves’ budget are supposed to feel about their TV licences doubling? This will, I suspect, only encourage people to join the great switch off, replacing Auntie with TikTok and YouTube, which is what increasing numbers of young people are doing.

Now, £174.50 a year for a non-essential service is a hefty bill to pay when money is tight, and money is always tight if you are on benefits. Women, in particular, have been jailed for non-payment of fines issued for failure to pay the TV licence. The penalty maxes out at £1,000 plus costs. If you can’t afford £174.50, you’re not going to be able to afford a swinging fine on top of that. So Britain’s costly and overcrowded prisons get more overcrowded and costly.

Where does this leave the working poor? The people slogging away at low-paying jobs, battered by inflation, struggling with debts, and looking at the bill for the Beeb with something resembling horror. Having grown up in a single-parent household, which was in that position for quite some time, I can tell you it’s not a good feeling looking at the bill for the Beeb when it lands on the doormat. The TV licence was, at a times, a real struggle.

“Free Beeb for some but you want me to pay more when I’m struggling with a mortgage I can’t really afford? Fine. Then I’m done with it. I’ll get my entertainment elsewhere.”

Nandy is not the sharpest tack in the box. Culture secretaries rarely are, which is a shame when you consider the importance to the economy of the sector. I wonder if she sees the fire she is playing with here? I wonder if the BBC sees it?

It isn’t just that people will switch off. An incoming administration of a different political hue will surely scrap the licence and tell Auntie that it’s time to sink or swim. Such a policy might prove quite popular outside certain privileged enclaves.

It is time to face facts: the licence fee is an ugly antique. It is ultimately doomed. Better to accept that and work on something that preserves the best of the institution now, before it gets wrecked later. That would be the progressive move.

Does that mean ads on Auntie? Certainly on the iPlayer. But so what? Let people get used to them or pay for their removal, a la Netflix. I think people probably would subscribe. The BBC has an impressive array of distinctly British content and an enviable back catalogue. Watching it without ads is worth paying for, if you can.

The news operation could be funded from the revenues this new model brings in, which is what Sky does now. As for scheduled TV? That’s dying. It will be gone within a generation.

This way, people on benefits and hard-working families catch a break. So could everyone else. There will be no more ghastly court cases, no more mothers banged up for non-payment of TV licence fines. There will also be no more rows about the excessive salaries that some of the corporation’s stars pocket.

Time for the corporation to accept the future. Ditto, Nandy.