UK could decriminalise non-payment of BBC licence fee - minister

[snoop1130]

UK could decriminalise non-payment of BBC licence fee - minister

 

FILE PHOTO: Britain's Justice Secretary Robert Buckland is seen outside Downing Street in London, Britain November 5, 2019. REUTERS/Yara Nardi

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is looking at whether or not to decriminalise the penalty for non-payment of the 154.50-pound ($198) annual BBC “licence fee” tax on all television-watching households, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said on Tuesday.

 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday questioned why the BBC should continue to be supported by the annual fee, one of the biggest hints to date that the funding of Britain’s main news provider could be upended.

 

“What we are talking about as a first step is the decriminalisation of failing to pay the TV licence,” Buckland told BBC radio.

 

He said people during election campaigning had said they worried about the cost of the licence fee.

 

“Is it right to criminalise and target a vulnerable section of society for what really is an issue of civil liability? We would consult on that to work out whether criminalisation is the right way to approach this issue,” he said.

 

It is a criminal offence to watch TV or use BBC iplayer in the United Kingdom without a valid TV licence.

 

“The government’s own independent review found the current system of criminal deterrence and prosecution should be maintained,” a BBC spokesman said in a statement.

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-12-10

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[sanemax]

Yes, I have to pay £154 a year, just to watch Match of the Day when Chelsea win .

Not good value for money 

[roo860]

Never had one for the last 5 years, f em.

[steve187]

about time

[roo860]

3 hours ago, sanemax said:

Yes, I have to pay £154 a year, just to watch Match of the Day when Chelsea win .

Not good value for money 

It's free to watch it in a pub with ya mates.

[Orton Rd]

It's not a crime now, just say you do not watch live tv. The days of the license fee are numbered anyway by the look of it, seve 'em right.

[donnacha]

I was once quite pro the license fee, and saw the BBC as something to be proud of.

Over the past decade, however, it has become increasingly clear that people are being asked to pay for propaganda promoting the interests of a comfortable elite who have nothing but contempt for the majority of Britons.

There at least used to be a pretense of impartiality, but that has been discarded, most obviously during the close-run Scottish independence referendum and, then, Brexit.

Whatever your position of either of those political events, it was disheartening to see the national broadcaster descend to such lazy, crude framing of complex issues. For years, other perspectives were suppressed because it was almost impossible to compete with the hefty subsidy the BBC got from the license fee.

Only in recent years, with the impact of YouTube and podcasting, have we seen how vibrant our national discussion should have been all along. Quite rightly, many eyes have been opened and license subscriptions canceled.

It is clear to me that popular shows such as Top Gear and respected shows such as David Attenbourough's nature documentaries could easily be funded through a normal pay TV model, including worldwide Netflix-style subscriptions, or selling the rebroadcasting rights to networks in other countries. I mean, this is what they actually do anyway, with huge amounts getting sliced off the top by private companies.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for private production, but why not truly let the market decide rather than salt the entire population?

Is anyone seriously suggesting that Graham Norton would stop broadcasting if it turned out that his efforts were worth £1,000 per minute rather than the current £2,000 per minute he earns? 

British culture is strong enough, and internationally respected enough, to thrive without placing a tax on the ownership of televisions and enforcing it with draconian laws and bullying tactics. In practice, it is a regressive tax, with the vast majority of prosecutions against people on low incomes.

Please understand where this is inevitably going. In Ireland, to get around the problem of people watching shows online, they decided that the license had to be paid by people who owned any sort of computing device - to understand just how bizarre this demand is, you need to know that Irish TV is wall-to-wall rubbish. Think of Thai TV, but with slightly smugger presenters. There are plenty of Irish citizens who never watch Irish television.

Again, times have changed, technology has changed, the economy has changed. In modern Britain, no one should be forced to pay for a particular organization's content simply because they own a television or any other device.

It would be a simple matter for the BBC to encrypt their content as other broadcasters in the UK and throughout the world already do. Their reliance on a license fee is lazy, morally wrong, and preserves a particularly noxious elite in a country that could do with less of that.