How to fix the BBC licence fee

Nadine Dorries came out fighting over the weekend to declare it was time to discuss new ways to fund and sell the ‘great British content’ produced by the BBC. But it turned out she had little in the way of ammunition once she reached the Commons yesterday.

There will be a two-year freeze in the £159 fee — a measure that will represent a real-terms cut in the corporation’s funding, but hardly the ‘mortal threat’ some alarmists have declared. In 2019–20, the BBC generated total income of £4.94 billion, of which £3.52 billion was public funding from the licence fee. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the BBC is expected to receive about £3.7 billion in licence fee funding in 2022, and the fee will rise in line with inflation for the four years from April 2024. Dorries reassured the Commons that ‘we have five or six years… plenty of time to decide what a future funding model will look like,’ and announced another review into the future of the levy.