Means test TV licences

From: Coun Tim Mickleburgh (Lab), Boulevard Avenue, Grimsby.

FREE TV licences, along with free bus travel, were New Labour gimmicks. Rather than increase the basic rate of state pension which would benefit all those of a certain age, the Government chose to introduce those perks that were pointless if you either didn’t want a television or had no local bus service. Moreover, there was the anomaly that poorer retirees on Pension Credit didn’t get a free TV licence if they were under 75, whereas wealthy pensioners over that age did. Now it seems that the chickens have come to roost, with the BBC looking at whether they can afford in future to subsidise free licences.

Of course they should look at the waste they make and the silly salaries paid to their big stars, including those who only read the news off an autocue.

Sadly, though, that won’t be enough by itself to meet the current cost of the pensioners’ licence subsidy.

So what should happen? Well, Bill Carmichael goes over the top in some of the language he uses (The Yorkshire Post, February 8). The Government has kept a triple-lock system in place so that pensioners aren’t financially disadvantaged.

Talk therefore of a “fixed low pension” is somewhat misleading. Similarly, if the BBC are to “squeeze money out of poor pensioners”, it would only be partly true if the subsidy was entirely done away with. For most pensioners aren’t poor, with means testing ensuring that the least well-off wouldn’t lose out.

Really, I think that is the best way forward, as there is no justification for basic rate taxpayers on the minimum wage having their licence payments subsidise free licences for those over 75 paying the highest rates of tax.

The whole scenario shows that future Chancellors must be more careful how their spread their largesse.