As part of its financial settlement with the chancellor in July, the BBC agreed to take on a proportion (less than 25%) of the cost of providing free TV licences to the over-75s between 2015 and 2020 (Letters, 29 December). In return the BBC was granted financial concessions (indexation of the licence fee and reduction in spend on broadband roll-out and S4C) worth virtually the same amount. After 2020 there will be no obligation on the BBC to provide free TV licences to anyone, but the valuable concessions will remain in place.
All this is on the record and easily checked. The terms of the financial deal were published, with the BBC confirming at the time that it was “cash neutral”. The freedom of the BBC to do as it liked after 2020 was clearly stated by John Whittingdale at the Guardian International Edinburgh Television Festival in August, which makes all the more regrettable your persistent misreporting of this issue. In effect, the proportion of the cost of free licences for the over-75s not being borne by the Department for Work and Pensions in this parliament is being borne by a rise in the cost of the licence fee for the under-75s. There is no negative impact on the BBC itself.
David Elstein
London
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