Brits should be forced to pay the BBC licence fee even if they don’t use it, a set of media chiefs have suggested.
Taxpayers should pay for the BBC in the same way as they subsidise the NHS or state schools, TV producers have claimed, because the broadcaster performs a ‘public good’.
And while the BBC battles reputational battles on all fronts, they even suggested that licence fee payments should rise with inflation so the broadcaster could avoid facing ‘frequent reviews of its funding’.
‘I think the premise of the debate around the BBC is quite often wrong, because you hear people say, “I don’t want the BBC, therefore I shouldn’t pay for it”,’ Sir Peter Bazalgette, who brought Big Brother to Channel 4, told Parliament’s culture committee on Tuesday.
‘This is not what people who’ve joined a private school say about paying their taxes for education, and not what people use private medicine say about paying taxes for the health service.’
He added: ‘I believe the BBC is a similar public good, and the permanent charter would greatly assist it.
‘Even more than that, it would be quite good if you linked the level of the payment – let’s call it the license fee, for the moment to the rate of inflation – so you didn’t have to have frequent reviews of its funding.’
But a Reform spokesperson said on Tuesday night that Sir Peter’s comparison ‘simply doesn’t hold’.
Brits should be forced to pay the BBC licence fee even if they don’t use it, a set of media chiefs have suggested
‘I think the premise of the debate around the BBC is quite often wrong, because you hear people say, ‘I don’t want the BBC, therefore I shouldn’t pay for it,’ Sir Peter Bazalgette, who brought Big Brother to Channel 4 , told Parliament’s culture committee on Tuesday
New BBC Director-General Matt Brittin arrives at the BBC as it faces reputational battles on all fronts
They said: ‘Education and the NHS are core public services, regardless of whether people are currently using them.
‘The BBC is a broadcaster competing in a modern media market with hundreds of alternatives.
‘It is fundamentally unfair to force millions of people to pay a licence fee for content they neither watch nor value, especially at a time when household budgets are under pressure.’
The group’s intervention comes as the BBC has hit its lowest ebb following a recent string of high-profile scandals.
But now Sir Peter’s fellow witnesses unanimously called for a permanent charter for the broadcaster – which critics fear would see the Beeb escape scrutiny.
Patrick Younge, former chief creative officer of BBC Television, claimed the BBC should be seen as a ‘democratic defence’ against the six men who ‘own or control most of the platforms through which media is shared, produced, or consumed’ – referencing Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
He said: ‘The BBC needs to be thought about as part of our democratic defence and our resilience defence against a data environment that we no longer control.’
And set against this media landscape, he claimed the argument to create a permanent charter is ‘existential’ for both the BBC and ‘UK democracy’.
Sir Peter added: ‘The truth is we live in an era, and we haven’t touched on it yet, of immense undermining of civil society by what appears in the cesspit of social media – the home of rumour and gossip – and the BBC, to some extent, is the antidote to that.’
While the BBC battles allegations of institutional bias, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said she is in favour of granting the broadcaster a permanent charter – though has ruled out funding it through general taxation.
BBC executives have long argued that the current system in which the broadcaster’s charter had to be renewed every 10 years creates a continuous existential threat from political interference.
This comes as fewer Brits have been paying the BBC licence fee in recent years – prompting calls from within the corporation to rethink its funding model.
The standard BBC TV licence fee is currently £180 per year for a colour television and £60.50 for a black and white set.
Around 94 per cent of Brits use the BBC’s services each month, but only 80 per cent of households pay the licence fee.
