How odd the licence fee mess is one story about cuts the BBC isn’t obsessing over

Over the decades — during the Thatcher years as well as under more recent Conservative governments — the BBC has been assiduous in its reporting of any cuts in entitlements.

Tory spokesmen who insist such measures are an essential element in maintaining national economic solvency are given short shrift by BBC presenters.

George Osborne, the former Chancellor, was especially irked by this, notably after an Autumn Statement five years ago when the Today programme declared we were going back to the state of deprivation depicted by George Orwell in The road To Wigan Pier.

BBC Newsnight also cited the Depression of the 1930s as the nearest thing to modern Britain under the Conservatives.

Osborne raged: ‘I would have thought the BBC would have learnt from the last four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what has actually happened.’

Now look: it is the BBC itself which has taken the decision to cut a universal social entitlement — that of free Tv licences to all homes occupied by someone over the age of 75.

Goodies

But you won’t have seen or heard the Corporation’s bosses being monstered by the presenters of the BBC’s current affairs programmes. Its director-general, Lord (Tony) Hall, is one of those keeping his head down.

As well he might. For Hall was also in charge in 2015, when the BBC agreed to the Government’s insistence that the cost of funding licences for the over-75s would — in time — be borne by the broadcaster.

Hall got goodies in return: the BBC’s obligation to fund broadband in rural areas would be substantially reduced, the licence fee would be increased in line with inflation for the next five years and the BBC would be allowed to charge the full licence fee to those watching its programmes on devices other than a television set.

Hall afterwards declared this was a good deal, all in all: ‘If anything, it will put the BBC slightly up.’

And there was absolutely no suggestion that the Corporation would welch on the arrangement to keep all over-75s out of the obligation to pay the licence fee. Indeed, the main story on the BBC news website after the deal was signed was headlined ‘BBC to fund over-75s Tv licences’.

It was, however, a staggered arrangement: the Department for Work and Pensions would continue to pay hundreds of millions of pounds per annum to fund the concession for the following five years. As set out in the letter from Osborne to Hall, it would not be until 2020 that ‘the BBC will take on the full cost of the over-75s licence concession’.

And so, just as it was about to become fully liable, the Corporation has decided that it cannot afford to do it, and proposes that only those in receipt of pension credit (that is, the poorest of the over-75s) will be eligible for the concession.

A document justifying this change, provided by a consultancy firm paid by the BBC, observes that since 1999, when Gordon Brown as Chancellor introduced the over-75s licence fee concession, ‘much has changed’. Specifically, it points out that since 1999, there has been a marked improvement in the income of pensioners relative to the rest of the population. That is quite true. But the agreement between Tony Hall and the Conservative Government was signed in 2015, not 1999. Those ‘changes’ in the relative financial position of pensioners had already occurred. So it is dishonest to suggest that the BBC has discovered anything new of material significance which absolves it of the duty to honour the agreement it made just four years ago.

Ruse

Of course, its line is that it didn’t agree to fund the concession in the same way as the Government has done hitherto: it now says that it agreed only to take ‘responsibility’ for this area of policy.

Imagine what a BBC presenter would do to a Conservative Government minister attempting such a ruse in any interview about a cut to entitlements.

But, as I say, Lord Hall has escaped any searching interrogation, deigning to appear on our screens only in the form of an uninterrupted pronouncement for BBC Midlands — and I don’t even recall hearing any BBC presenter saying: ‘We asked the director-general to give us an interview, but he has declined.’

Actually, the BBC’s acute embarrassment on this matter was predicted by Osborne when he struck the deal with Hall. I can’t say how I know, but I do. After the negotiations were concluded, Osborne observed to Hall that the BBC seemed to lose no opportunity to lead its news bulletins with reports about the cruelty of Tory cuts to social entitlements. He went on to wonder how the BBC would report the day when it had the responsibility for deciding on the over-75s free Tv licence — and chopped it for its own budgetary purposes.

Well, now we know. And if furious pensioners march on New Broadcasting House, the BBC will endure its very own version of the demonstrations against the Poll Tax. I wonder how it will report that!