Benefit claimants could get free TV licences under Labour

Labour will consider calls to make the TV licence free for people on benefits, i has learnt.

Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire told i the BBC must “change with the times and be fair to licence fee payers, especially in a cost of living crisis”, ahead of a Government review examining alternatives to the charge.

It came after former BBC boss Greg Dyke said wealthier people should pay more for the broadcaster to allow people on benefits to get free TV licences.

Ms Debbonaire is understood to be open to ideas about how to reform the TV licence, including making it more progressive, as long as the BBC remains a universal, publicly owned, publicly funded service.

Asked about Mr Dyke’s call, she told i: “The BBC is one of our greatest institutions.

“To make sure it carries on informing, educating and entertaining for generations to come it needs to change with the times and be fair to licence fee payers, especially in a Tory cost-of-living crisis.

“Labour is clear the BBC must continue as a universal, publicly owned, publicly funded public service broadcaster, with funding that is sufficient and sustainable.

“We will work constructively with the BBC to make sure its funding model is fit for the 21st century.”

Speaking as the Government reviews alternatives to the charge, which rises to £169.50 in April, Mr Dyke said the licence fee should remain but be means-tested to reduce the burden on lower income households.

He told i that wealthier people would need to pay more under his proposal, to avoid the BBC facing a black hole of up to £1bn in its public funding by giving free licences to people on benefits.

There are around nine million working-age people on benefits who currently get no financial assistance with their TV licence.

The review into alternative funding models – with a broadband levy and subscriptions among suggestions – was announced in December and is expected to report by this autumn. The government is committed to the licence fee until December 2027, when the current BBC charter ends.

Giving free or discounted licences to people on low incomes could reduce the level of prosecutions for licence fee evasion, running at an estimated 130 people a day, according to recent figures.

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Michael Grade, a previous BBC chair and now head of media watchdog Ofcom, said in November that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) review should ask if it was fair for a wealthy executive like himself to pay the same fee as a single mother living on a low income under the “regressive tax”.

It came as former culture secretary Nadine Dorries said the BBC licence fee would not be scrapped because a review of funding was blocked by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor.

The ex-Tory MP told GB News: “He actually said to me, ‘no, you can’t do this, because it’s a taxation policy and taxation policy is the Treasury’.

“It isn’t taxation policy, but he blocked and blocked it… as a result of the Government holding up that review of the BBC licence fee, the licence fee is here to stay, because there is no way, what I was told when I was Culture Secretary, it would take at least three years to bring a change about.”

Ms Dorries went on: “They have deliberately stalled until now and certainly it is therefore not possible to change the BBC funding model.

“The BBC licence fee is here to stay and it will continue to rise and people… will still be prosecuted, the most vulnerable people, for non-payment of the licence fee.”

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