Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has called on the Conservatives to guarantee that they will reject the Democratic Unionist party’s pledge to scrap the BBC licence fee in talks to secure a parliamentary deal.
Watson, who is also shadow culture secretary, has written to his counterpart, Karen Bradley, calling for her to “fight hard” to make sure that the DUP’s election pledge is not on the table as part of any concessions agreed to form a majority government.
“The DUP’s manifesto includes a commitment to ‘freeze then cut or abolish the TV licence’,” said Watson in a letter sent to the culture secretary on Tuesday. “I urge you to fight hard to ensure that this pledge is not included in any agreement, formal or otherwise, between the Conservative party and the DUP.”
The DUP includes potentially scrapping the £3.7bn annual licence fee as one of six election pledges in its manifesto section on increasing family incomes.
“The TV licence fee is a highly regressive tax which was designed for a different era and a world of communications that no longer exists,” the DUP pledge stated. “The success of Netflix and Amazon streaming services shows that subscription-based media can and does work.”
The DUP said it would form an independent commission to review the BBC and look at “alternative funding models”, look at opportunities for competitive tendering of key services to the commercial sector and produce a plan that will “either significantly reduce the licence fee or abolish it”.
Watson pointed out that the Tory manifesto had no specific pledge to retain the BBC licence fee, arguing that it could therefore acquiesce to the DUP without breaching pre-election promises made to the UK public.
“Don’t do this,” said Watson. “Cutting or abolishing the TV licence would jeopardise the BBC’s future as an independent, advertiser-free national broadcaster. It would be a great mistake. I look forward to receiving reassurances that there will be no concessions to the DUP on this matter. And I would be grateful if you would give a specific commitment to maintaining the TV licence as the BBC’s funding mechanism.”
In 2015, the Tories confirmed the survival of the licence fee funding mechanism for at least the next five years after reaching a deal with the BBC that included taking on the £750m cost of providing it free to people aged over 75.
The licence fee increases in line with inflation until at least 2020, when it will be the subject of the next negotiation between the corporation, Treasury and the culture department.
In 2014, former culture secretary John Whittingdale, then the chair of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said the BBC licence fee was “worse than the poll tax” and unsustainable in the long term.
