BBC is urged to resist the end of free TV licences for the over-75s
BBC bosses were yesterday urged to “be brave” and tell the Government to reclaim responsibility for television licences for the over 75s.
Campaign groups urged the corporation to stand up to ministers and warned that ending free licences next year would leave tens of thousands of pensioners in poverty.
The broadcaster should not have to decide if pensioners get a “welfare benefit”, campaigners said.
Age UK, the National Pensioners Convention and National Union of Journalists, penned the joint letter.
They demanded that chair of the BBC board Sir David Clementi tell ministers that ending free licences for the over75s was simply wrong.
But they also stressed younger licence fee-payers should not be asked to foot the bill.
The Government-funded scheme currently providing free TV licences to the elderly ends in June 2020.
The BBC has to decide whether to continue the benefit but has said that shouldering the cost – expected to hit £745million by 2021-22 – would “fundamentally change” the broadcaster.
Poverty
In the joint letter, the groups said there are two million people aged 75-plus in Britain, half of whom are disabled and a quarter of whom say their television is their main form of companionship.
Removing the free licence from this group would push at least 50,000 older people into poverty, the letter said.
But campaigners also warned that for the BBC to fund the concession from licence-fee payers would equally mean the end of our public service broadcaster as we know it.
They said: “The public never voted to make the BBC the arbiter of welfare benefits.
“It is not our public service broadcaster’s function to decide whether one pensioner receives a free licence, and another does not.
“Indeed, to do so risks alienating the BBC in the public’s mind at a time when the corporation needs support from its listeners and viewers as never before in its history.
“It is government who should make such policy decisions and it is government who must fund this vital social policy.”
It added that the 2015 secret deal between the BBC and ministers, when the corporation agreed to finance the benefit in return for the licence fee being linked to inflation, showed how vital it was for these settlements to take place in an accountable and transparent process, independent of the government of the day.
The letter added: “The BBC leadership must be brave. It needs to forget about making the best out of implementing the deal done in 2015.
“It must say that ending free licences for the over-75s is wrong-headed and divisive.”