Days of licence fee are over, BBC told
Corporation will need to find another way to fill coffers by 2028, Culture Secretary says
The BBC licence fee will be axed in 2028, the Culture Secretary suggested yesterday.
Nadine Dorries said the next licence fee announcement – expected in the coming days – ‘will be the last’.
She vowed to tear up the BBC’s funding model when its current charter ends in 2027, and said it was time to discuss new ways of funding ‘great British content’.
Mrs Dorries heralded an end to the ‘days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors’.
The announcement came as it was revealed by The Mail on Sunday that she was set to freeze the corporation’s funding for the next two years following a row about BBC bias in its coverage of Boris Johnson.
her decision to hold the fee at £159 a year until 2024 and then kill it off risked a war with the BBC last night.
Officials are thought to have calculated that with inflation at 5.1 per cent, the BBC would need to find more than £2billion in savings over the next six years.
BBC insiders said last night the freeze will slash production budgets and could force the corporation to axe services.
One source said: ‘This is of such a scale
‘Backbenchers will feel it is getting off lightly’
and significance there is no escaping the impact on services and on content.’
The corporation is understood to have argued that licence fee freezes will affect its ability to make shows such as Line Of Duty and Sir David Attenborough’s natural history shows.
But while insiders warned that a two-year freeze would have extreme consequences, one MP said many Tory backbenchers would feel the BBC was ‘getting off lightly’ because it was still expected to benefit from several years of inflation-linked increases.
Mr Johnson’s chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, is said to believe the BBC ‘simply didn’t get it’ when it came to concerns about bias.
Senior Conservatives were furious last week at how the corporation covered Mr Johnson’s apology to Parliament for a lockdown party at No10, saying it felt as if the BBC would not stop ‘until he’s gone’.
At a meeting with Mr Rosenfield, Mr Davie is said to have asked why the Government conflated discussions about bias with those about the licence fee, claiming they were ‘completely separate issues’.
Mr Rosenfield is reported to have told him the corporation could be as biased as it liked – but only if it was not funded by taxpayers.
An ally of Mrs Dorries told The Mail on Sunday ‘the days of staterun TV are over’ and that ‘it’s over for the BBC as they know it’. There were suggestions last night that the corporation could refuse to agree to the new deal, but many doubt it has the power to do this.
Others speculated Mr Davie and BBC chairman Richard Sharp could threaten to resign. As well as the two-year freeze, Miss Dorries could also give the BBC belowinflation licence fee increases between 2024 and the end of the current Royal Charter on December 31, 2027. Although licence fee negotiations have concluded, a well-placed source said the BBC still hoped to convince Government to change its mind.
A source said Mr Davie had been due to meet Mrs Dorries on Wednesday, when she would lay out her plans – but that was set before this weekend’s revelations.
Gary Lineker, paid up to £1.36million by the BBC last year, tweeted last night: ‘The BBC is revered, respected and envied around the world.
‘It should be the most treasured of national treasures. Something true patriots of our country should be proud of. It should never be a voice for those in government whoever is in power.’
One former senior BBC journalist described her announcement as a ‘barefaced attempt’ to divert attention from the No10 party ‘fiasco’ in a ‘rather ridiculous way’. he said it was an ‘easy dollop of raw meat’ for backbenchers.
But Tory MP Julian Knight, chairman of the digital, culture, media and sport committee, said many backbenchers would regard a two-year freeze as a good deal for the BBC if the rest of the settlement was in line with inflation.
he said: ‘Many Tory backbenchers will feel that the BBC is getting off lightly. The Secretary of State is talking tough, but look behind the words and you see the BBC has got away with charging the over-75s and will still enjoy several years of inflation-linked increases.
‘What’s more, there is no clear plan as to how the BBC will be made to move away from the licence fee from 2027.
‘I really fear we will have a regressive licence fee in... 30 years from now. This feels like Quorn rather than bloody red meat for the backbenches.’
Industry experts believe that a two year freeze will see high-end dramas on the BBC be massively scaled back along with things like sports rights. The licence fee currently brings in £3.2billion a year.
ONCe the BBC was revered as a bastion of honest, impartial journalism.
today, it is woefully out of touch with its core audience, riddled with metropolitan Left-wing orthodoxy, and openly prejudiced against the tory Government.
Nothing illustrates this more starkly than director-general tim Davie’s surprise that ministers conflate discussions about bias with those about the licence fee. Does he really not get it? the corporation can show favouritism all it likes … but shouldn’t then expect to suck up taxpayers’ money.
Now the Culture secretary Nadine Dorries suggests the licence fee is to end. In an era of multiple-choice streaming services such as Netflix, this compulsory £3.7billion tax – which sees the elderly threatened with prison if they can’t pay – feels as archaic as a black-and-white tV set.
Don’t get us wrong: the BBC’s best output is of the highest quality. But thanks to its perpetual anti-conservative harping, the monolith is hastening its own demise.