Criminal sanctions for people who fail to pay the television licence fee are “increasingly disproportionate and unfair,” according to Culture Minister Julia Lopez. Ms Lopez says she is “concerned about the impact that a licence fee enforced by criminal sanctions can have on people”.
Watching, recording or downloading programmes illegally can face a £1,000 fine.
In a letter to the anti-licence fee group Defund The BBC, Ms Lopez said: “The Government sees these sanctions as increasingly disproportionate and unfair in a modern public service broadcasting system, and we have committed to keep this issue under consideration as we look at the future of the licence fee.”
She added that the Government expects the broadcaster to be “fair, measured, and proportionate in its approach to collecting the licence fee, in particular treating vulnerable people or those facing financial hardship with sensitivity”.
The cost of the licence fee for a colour television will next month go up from £159 to £169.50. The licence fee generated £3.74billion in 2022-23 and accounted for 65 per cent of BBC funding.
Licence fee evasion has nearly doubled from 5.5 per cent in 2012-13 to 10.31 per cent in 2022-23, with the BBC’s share of audience declining from 34 per cent in 2008 to 32 per cent last year. According to the BBC, prosecutions in England and Wales have fallen from 128,000 people in 2017-18 to 44,000 in 2021-22.
Rebecca Ryan of Defund The BBC said: “The future of the BBC is an important issue on the doorstep. People across the country are fed up with the pious holier-than-you attitudes of the BBC and their all too often flagrant bias.
“Voters have had enough of propping up an institution that is unfriendly to their interests.”
The group has asked all candidates in the “red wall” seats in Labour’s traditional heartland to state their personal position on the future of the BBC.
In her letter, Ms Lopez addresses the impartiality of the BBC, stating: “The impartiality of the BBC, as a publicly funded broadcaster, goes to the heart of the contract between the organisation and licence fee payers. Ofcom has found that audience perceptions of the BBC’s impartial delivery of news is lower than their perceptions of its trustworthiness and accuracy.”
However, she adds: “As a Government, our aim will always be to ensure that a strong, distinctive, independent BBC can continue to thrive for years to come – and also to improve the BBC where we can, providing high quality public service content on a universal basis.”
In December, a review in to the future of the licence fee was launched. This followed a two-year freeze of the licence fee in 2022 to help families with cost of living challenges.
A BBC spokesman said: “It is absolutely right that we debate how the BBC is best funded to ensure that it can thrive – not just today, but in the future – with public service at its heart, projecting the UK’s values across the globe, producing impartial news, and telling stories through content that reflect the real lives of people across the UK. We will continue to engage with the Government review as it evolves over the coming months.”
