TV licences decision ‘not one for BBC’

THE DECISION over whether to continue providing free TV licences for the over-75s should not be made by the BBC, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.

The Government-funded scheme is due to end in 2020, with responsibility transferring to the BBC.

A consultation on its future has been launched by the corporation, but it has warned that continuing with the scheme could cost around a fifth of its budget.

Writing in the Daily Mirror yesterday, Mr Brown, who introduced the free licences when he was Chancellor in 1999, criticised the Government for “wash(ing) its hands of the issue”.

“Despite its election promise to protect free TV licences, the Government has ... deliberately but shamefully transferred responsibility for deciding who in our pensioner community pays the licence fee or does not pay to the BBC itself,” he said.

“Quite simply the BBC should not be making judgments about the distribution of income between social groups.”

Mr Brown also warned that the number of pensioners in poverty had risen over the past three years, and that abolishing the free TV licences would “make that poverty worse”.

“Just at the time as poverty is rising the benefit is at risk of being taken away,” he said.

The BBC has previously said that the cost of continuing to provide free TV licences for over-75s would “fundamentally change” the corporation.