Scrapping free TV licences for the over-75s will cost the BBC dearly

Well, that was surprising. The BBC has announced that from 2020 it will do away with free TV licences for the over-75s. In future, free licences will only be available to households which have at least one member receiving pension credit. Everyone else will have to pay the full whack of £154.50 a year. In defence of its decision, the BBC cites the results of a consultation, 52 per cent of the 190,000 respondents to which it says were approving of its decision to end blanket TV licences for the over-75s.

Let’s skate over other recent democratic exercise where 52 per cent of the population were in favour of something but which the BBC often seems less than enthusiastic about accepting. But of course the consultation came up with that result. It presented the subject as an issue of intergenerational fairness, effectively asking younger TV-owners: do you want to pay more for your licence in order to subsidise the elderly? It failed to ask a more fundamental question: do you think the TV licence fee (no, let’s call it the tax that it is) should exist, or should the BBC be put on a proper commercial footing and made to raise its funds like every other broadcaster: either through advertising, subscriptions or a mixture of the two?