Ageing TV licence fee refuseniks leave £117m hole in BBC budget Nadeem Badshah Monday February 08 2021, 12.01am, The Times
Left to right, Walter Scott, Eric Harvey, and Hugh Rafferty, protesting outside Broadcasting House in Belfast LIAM MCBURNEY
Up to 750,000 older people have refused to pay for a television licence after losing their right to a free one, figures suggest.
That equates to a £117 million deficit for the BBC, which scrapped free licences for over-75s last August.
A refusal to pay the £157.50 annual fee can result in a £1,000 fine and a prison sentence of three to six months.
Dennis Reed, director of the pensioner campaign group Silver Voices, said: “There are a hard core who are resisting.
1 The stalling is significant. The over-75s have suddenly been flooded with further reminder letters.
“Some had three or four letters in the last couple of weeks reminding them their licences would be cancelled. They are desperate to get people to pay.
“The BBC has made a total pig’s ear of this and if the courts start fining and jailing the over-75s their roof will fall in.” The BBC confirmed that 2.7 million over-75s had paid for their licence. An extra 750,000 applied for free licences available to anyone on pension credit, leaving a shortfall of 750,000 based on the 4.2 million over-75s who previously held free licences.
Some could be covered if other people in the household have a licence, if they have stopped watching the BBC or have died. The figure, reported by the Sunday Mirror, has been denied by the BBC. The free licences had been paid for by the government since 2000 but responsibility was passed to the corporation as part of its last licence fee settlement in 2015.
The former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe said: “The BBC is wrong. When the government was running it, when you were over 75, you got a free licence. I can see no reason at all to take that away.
“The quality of BBC1 is awful. BBC2 isn’t so bad. When it’s not a repeat it’s full of swearing and violence and nudity and sex and God knows what else.”
2 TV Licensing, on behalf of the BBC, said: “Around 80 per cent of over- 75 households have transitioned to the new system, including those in receipt of pension credit eligible for a free licence funded by the BBC.
“We’re giving people time to get set up, the process is Covid-secure and we have measures to support people, including payment plans. We are not visiting households registered as having held a free over- 75s licence.”
3