Warning over threat to axe free TV licences
MORE THAN two million over75s would have to go without television or cut back on essentials such as heating or eating if free TV licences are scrapped, a charity has warned.
Age UK said more than 40 per cent of people over 75 would not be able to afford the licence or would have to cut back on essentials to pay for it, based on the results of its research.
Currently, households with people over 75 are entitled to a free TV licence. But the Government-funded scheme, which is expected to cost £745m by 2021/22, comes to an end in 2020. It will then be for the BBC to decide whether to continue it, and in what form it will exist.
The cost of the licence is set to increase on April 1 from £150.50 to £154.50 a year.
Research indicated that 50,000 pensioners could be pushed below the poverty line if the BBC decides to scrap free TV licences, the charity said.
Its director, Caroline Abrahams, said: “The Government created this problem and it is in their power to solve it: we urge them to stop hiding behind the BBC and accept their responsibility for free TV licences for the over-75s.”
A Government spokesman yesterday said it was right that the BBC was not taking any decision until the public had been fully consulting, adding: “We’ve been clear that we would want and expect them to continue with this important concession.”
a negotiation that has already been concluded.
The BBC points to the high cost of free TV licences – £745m a year, or the equivalent of the total spending on BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, the News Channel, CBeebies and CBBC.
They also argue that older people consume more BBC content than younger people and a lot of older people are comparatively well off – so why shouldn’t they be forced to pay for a licence?
But on the other side of the argument many pensioners are on fixed low incomes and value the companionship that television can offer in often isolated lives.