Elderly could get visits from BBC licence fee ‘police’

THE BBC will recruit special ‘outreach teams’ to visit over- 75s and make them pay their licence fees in a move critics say will traumatise elderly people.

Pensioners who fail to pay for a licence or to submit evidence that they receive pension credit will receive a ‘support visit’ from a new BBC team.

From next summer, up to 3.7million people who currently receive free licences will have to pay after the BBC announced it would replace the universal concession with means-testing, claiming it can’t afford to fund it. A colour licence currently costs £154.50.

Clare Sumner, the BBC’s director of policy, told MPs at the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee that the door-todoor visits will be done as sympathetically as possible.

Asked by SNP MP Brendan O’Hara whether the corporation would be ‘vigorously pursuing non-payers’ in the same way they do for everyone else, she said: ‘We are recruiting a specific group of people who will pay support visits to this group and help them understand what the system is and help them apply. They will be a different cohort to people who enforce the licence fee.’

BBC sources told The Daily Telegraph that the ‘outreach programme’ will be delivered by ‘specifically-trained care field staff’.

Pensioners will also be able to receive face-to-face assistance at local community centres, and a telephone hotline will be available. However that did not stop critics from warning that the proposed changes will prove ‘deeply upsetting’ for elderly people.

Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s Charity Director, said: ‘The more we hear about how the BBC proposes to run its new scheme from June 2020, the more filled with foreboding we become.

‘Unfortunately, these comments today certainly don’t correct the impression we are gaining that it’s going to be chaos at best and deeply upsetting for some of our oldest people at worst. Really this is not at all surprising since there is no reason whatsoever to think our national broadcaster is equipped to administer a welfare benefits scheme.

‘We’ve said all along that this is the Government’s job and that’s why we call on our new prime minister to live up to the Conservatives’ manifesto pledge and continue to fund the entitlement.’

Miss Sumner appeared before MPs alongside the BBC’s director-general Tony Hall, who continued to blame the Government yesterday for having gone ‘nuclear’ with the decision to give the BBC responsibility for the licence fees. He told MPs that the Government ‘forced’ the corporation to shoulder the licence fee bill – previously paid by the Department for Work and Pensions – in a 2015 deal.

Speaking to the Commons committee, Lord Hall recalled: ‘I had a call from the then secretary of state John Whittingdale saying, “They are going to impose the over-75s concession on you.”

I said, “Well, that’s nuclear”, and I then laid out the consequences of that decision.’ Lord Hall attacked the Government, claiming that it had known since 2015 the BBC would have to make changes for over-75s.

He said: ‘They knew at the time it was a possibility, so the idea that somehow it’s not a possibility or somehow we have reneged on some settlement is just plain wrong.’ Lord Hall also revealed that the BBC could switch to a Netflix-style subscription service with a weekly play plan.

‘You could decide the BBC is a subscription service,’ he told MPs. ‘It would be very different to the sort of BBC you have now, because you would be giving subscribers what they want, not the breadth of the population.’

He added: ‘I would argue that’s the wrong model for the BBC.’