London, (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Silver Voices is running a joint campaign with the legal charity, APPEAL, this winter to try to persuade the BBC to suspend prosecutions for TV licence non-payment during the cost-of-living crisis. We are particularly concerned about those households on benefits who will be in genuine financial difficulty because of the surge in energy and food prices. There does not appear to be any point in prosecuting people who will be unable to pay the resulting fines and will therefore risk a criminal record for life over a £159 debt. So far, BBC Executives have refused to change their prosecution policies in any way, or to make anyother concessions to reflect the difficult times in which we live.
The number of prosecutions for TV licence non-payment is huge, around 50,000 cases last year. Shockingly, three quarters of these cases are brought against women, a gender disparity which the BBC is supposed to be investigating. APPEAL and Silver Voices presented some detailed proposals to meetings with senior BBCExecutives in the summer, involving simple reforms which could be made to the enforcement process to protect vulnerable people. These proposals fell into three categories, amending the handbook for visiting officer interviews in order to capture potential vulnerability; broadening public interest factors in prosecution policy, for example to take into account the gender and health condition of the customer; and improving communications between different TV Licensing departments so that vulnerabilities were not overlooked. After showing initial interest, our proposals were summarily dismissed, and we had no alternative but to launch a public campaign.
Public support for our campaign is growing. A petition by Josiane on change.org to Tim Davie, the Director General of the BBC, calling for TV licensing to stop “prosecuting people in the cost–of-living crisis” has achieved around 250,000 signatures to date. We will be intensifying our campaign in the coming weeks, with case studies on social media and in the national press. We are also lobbying the Culture Secretary to bring pressure to bear on Tim Davie’s team to adopt amore empathetic approach.
Silver Voices is not surprised, unfortunately, by the lack of compassion shown by BBC Executives in response to our proposals. We have beenengaged in a long-running battle with the same individuals ever since free TV licences for the over 75s were scrapped in August 2020. At that time, we presented a series of compromise proposals to BBC Executives to protect vulnerable older households, such as extending the exemptions to include customers with dementia, or raising the eligibility age for a free licence to 80. All our suggestions were rejected out of hand. The only exemption is for those on pension credit where there are serious eligibility problems. Anyone with a small occupational pension or modest savings is likely to be disbarred. We have been supporting around a quarter of a million over-75 households who have been unable to pay the fee over the last two years and who have been subjected to a barrage of threatening letters.
Our vibrant campaign has made it politically impossible for the BBC to prosecute any of these households to date, but the bullying tactics of TV Licensing has added increased stress to vulnerable households when anxiety about energy costs is already extreme. We have found in all our many dealings with Tim Davie and his senior team, a certain arrogance that they know best and an evasiveness in providing answers to reasonable questions about statistics and policies. Freedom of Information requests are delayed, and replies obfuscated wherever possible. For example, the BBC has refused to publicise for over a year how many over-75 households who previously held a free licence, have not paid for a new one, arguing that they “no longer keep this information”.
The Government cannot escape responsibility for this situation either. There was a manifestocommitment to keep free licences for the over 75s and yet funding for the BBC was withdrawn. The TV licence fee is a classic regressive tax which hits the poorest the hardest and yet theGovernment has washed its hands of helping families in hardship with the licence fee. In France, by contrast, the Government has responded to the cost-of-living crisis by scrapping the licence fee and funding public broadcasting directly.
Between the BBC and the Government there should be enough emotional intelligence to provide a supportive solution which will prevent thousands from being criminalised.
DENNIS REED Director Silver Voices
Biog: Dennis Reed is the Director of Silver Voices, a UK-wide campaign and membership organisation for the over 60s. Silver Voices has 5500 paid–up members and thousands more supporters on social media. Before he retired Dennis Reed was Chief Executive of the local government think-tank LGIU and prior to that the National Local Government Officer of the trade union UNISON. He is 74.