Jack Elsom and Glen Owen – The Mail on Sunday Dec 15, 2019
Boris Johnson is set to wage war with the BBC by putting in place plans to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee.
The Prime Minister has asked his top advisers to draw up a review of the mandatory £154.50 annual fee and whether viewers should be prosecuted for not paying it.
It tees up a stand-off with the Corporation which was already simmering after Downing Street imposed a blanket ban on ministers appearing on its flagship Today programme.
Conservatives were pulled from yesterday’s Radio 4 slot and Number 10 intends to ‘withdraw engagement’ from future broadcasts of the show.
Mr Johnson has already made his lukewarm feelings about the BBC clear, pledging to reconsider the licence fee in the campaign.
And he was last night revealed to come good on his promise by launching a review of the annual rate, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
The bitter stand-off comes as the BBC is facing intense criticism over alleged bias in its Election coverage, which included presenter Andrew Neil delivering an on-air monologue criticising Boris Johnson for failing to agree to be interviewed by him.
Tory strategists were also infuriated by the lead item on Monday’s BBC News At Ten, which gave extensive coverage to the row over a four-year-old boy with suspected pneumonia forced to sleep on a hospital floor.
They say the Corporation failed to properly report the swing in support from Labour to the Tories along the ‘Red Wall’ in the Midlands and the North which swept Mr Johnson to victory on a tide of support for Brexit.
Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: ‘The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington.
‘There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.’
The BBC angrily denies the allegations of bias. Senior figures in the Corporation describe the claims as ‘trumped up’ and part of an ‘agenda to use the new Tory majority to break the Corporation’s independence’.
Downing Street was also angered by Channel 4’s Election coverage after the channel replaced Boris Johnson with a melting ice sculpture when he declined to appear on its climate debate programme and falsely claimed he called immigrants ‘people of colour’ in a speech rather than ‘people of talent’.
The source said: ‘The broadcasters – and the BBC and Channel 4 in particular – had a very poor Election and need to shake things up for future campaigns.’
It comes as the new Government is drawing up plans to decriminalise non-payment of the fee, paving the way for it to be replaced eventually by a Netflix-style subscription model.
Mr Johnson’s influential senior adviser Dominic Cummings has long believed that the funding model for the Corporation is outdated for the 21st Century broadcast world which is increasingly dominated by subscription services.
The court system is struggling to cope with the burden of prosecutions brought for non-payment of the licence fee.
Mr Cummings is also highly critical about the BBC’s output, and is particularly dismissive of the Today programme – which for decades set the daily news agenda through interviews with Cabinet Ministers.
Mr Cummings has told colleagues that he ‘never listens’ to the programme any more.
The No 10 source added: ‘The Today programme is irrelevant, it is not a serious programme any more so we are not going to engage with it – it is far better for us to put people up on BBC Breakfast and Five Live.’
The Government declined to put up a Minister for interview on the programme yesterday morning, despite it being the first full day of the new Johnson administration.
‘During the Election campaign, Mr Johnson branded the £154.50- a-year licence a ‘tax’ and questioned how long such a funding system could be justified.
He said: ‘I think the system of funding by what is effectively a general tax… bears reflection.
‘How long can you justify a system whereby everybody who has a TV has to pay to fund a particular set of TV and radio channels? That is the question.’
The No 10 source stressed that the proposed changes to the licence fee were unconnected to the row over bias, but were a long-held view of Mr Johnson and his closest aides.
The fee raised £3.69 billion for the BBC in 2019, out of its total budget of £5 billion.
Ministers are constrained from making quick changes to the funding model by having previously agreed under the BBC’s Royal Charter to continue the current system until 2027, but moves to decriminalise non-payment could be introduced in Thursday’s Queen’s Speech – effectively turning it into a voluntary opt-in system.
About 180,000 people are prosecuted every year for failing to pay the fee, of which more than 150,000 are convicted. Seven in ten were women, who faced fines of £1,000 each. About 70 people were jailed for refusal to pay the fine.
Andrew Neil like David Frost are both MI5 disinfo operatives
both have been compromised by having sex with teenagers
these reptiles should not be on our screens, but the BBC really likes child raping perverts
it’s about time they got rid of the tv licence. it’s a throwback to the early days of radio & in a modern digital world isn’t right. BBC constantly advertise movies, books, videogames, music whilst claiming they aren’t allowed to have paid advertising (usually with thinly veiled “advertainment” articles trying to put a news slant on what is obviously paid promotion of big movies, games, books etc. fee paying viewers are funding programs that the BBC then sell on to other networks & countries (including dvd sales). BBC is even setting up a streaming service where they will take in more money re-selling shows funded by uk licence fee payers.
every year the licence fee increases while BBC rakes in millions by selling on the show whose profits should be used to reduce the fee & fund the BBC
BBC also has a trust of hangers on who all use the tv licence fee as their own wage & private cashbox.
in the modern digital worod the BBC is more than capable of sustaining itself without a forced payment from every uk household.
long past time for the tv licence fee to end
Just for this action, Boris deserve to be the Prime Minister ??
Let the BBC to compete with private channels for the money, like they do ??
Let them advertise Bonds Underwear, by having two faggots kissing each others ??
I’m sure that they will attract 85% of viewers & make millions from Bonds Underwear ?
Why should you pay for public service journalists who constantly lie to you, mislead, and patronize you?
I don’t ask the Bugger Boys’ Club (BBC) to transmit a signal that can only be decoded by specialised equipment (a TV set), so why should they be given the “right” to make me pay for something they CHOOSE to do?
The BBC, like all the other channels, does nothing but lie, lie and lie again, and the programmes are crap, so I choose not to have one of their brainwashing boxes.
That didn’t stop their thugs threatening to break in and search my place a few years ago when I was near to death and having to be looked after away from home.
What if they HAD broken in (a crime in itself)? I didn’t have a tel-aviv-zion set, but even if I had, owning one wouldn’t prove I was using it.
The thugs work on the assumption that everyone who doesn’t have a licence has a tv, and that those (like me) who don’t want to be brainwashed are lying when we say we don’t have a set.
A few years ago I mistakenly answered the door to one of these thugs, who did nothing but LIE, claiming I needed a licence because my computer COULD receive BBC (or other) broadcasts if I chose, and that I’d even need a licence if I were ever to watch something on Youtube that had originally been broadcast on ANY tv channel.
Abolish this unfair tax and it’s lying enforcers NOW.