In 2015, during the funding negotiations that took place as part of the BBC charter renewal, the United Kingdom Government, in a callous and irresponsible act, transferred responsibility to support older people by shifting the responsibility for funding the cost of providing free TV licences for people over 75 directly on to the BBC’s shoulders. That move was about the UK Government cutting its funding to the BBC and finding a means for the latter to take the blame for those cuts.
In June this year, the BBC announced that it would scrap free TV licences for over-75s, except for those households with one person in receipt of pension credit. Means testing eligibility for the concession will result in 3.7 million older people having to pay for their TV licences from June 2020.
Access to free television programming for the over-75s through free TV licences was a welcome announcement by the then Labour Government in 1999. Continued by successive Governments, such free licences were seen as an important welfare action. They enabled older people, who frequently spend more time at home, to be kept informed and entertained and to be treated with empathy and understanding.
The UK Government is playing games with welfare and public service broadcasting. On 26 August this year, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:
“The BBC received a settlement that was conditional upon their paying for TV licences for the over-75s. They should cough up.”
Now that a general election looms, Boris Johnson has changed his mind. The Prime Minister is quoted in The Sun of 4 November, which said that
“he was working hard to thrash out a solution so that no elderly viewers had to pay.”
On numerous occasions, the UK Government has stated its disappointment with the BBC’s decision, saying that it clearly wants and expects the BBC to continue the concession—one that the UK Government used to fund from the Department for Work and Pensions grant.
Where does the UK Government actually stand on the issue? The Conservative Party manifesto for 2017 said:
“We will maintain all other pensioner benefits, including free bus passes, eye tests, prescriptions and TV licences, for the duration of this parliament.”
In 2015, the UK Government did not want to continue to pay for free TV licences; in 2017, it said that it would continue to pay for them. In 2019, the Prime Minister said that the BBC should “cough up” for TV licences. The Conservatives are all over the place on the issue and cannot be trusted by pensioners, who deserve better. The UK Government should never have foisted responsibility for funding this welfare initiative on to the BBC in the first place.
The Scottish Government has repeatedly made its views known on the issue. In July 2015, following the decision, I wrote to the then UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, expressing my disappointment that the decision was made with no consultation with the Scottish Government. As the Deputy Presiding Officer will be aware, that is a clear breach of the Smith commission agreement on the BBC. As recently as 13 June, my colleague the Minister for Older People and Equalities, Christina McKelvie, wrote to the UK Government urgently requesting that the decision be reconsidered.
The UK Government has shamelessly pushed welfare policy on to the BBC, with scant regard to the consequences. Of course, this is not the first failure of the UK Government to consider the welfare of people across the UK and in Scotland. This year, the Scottish Government has continued to invest more than £100 million to mitigate the worst impacts of UK Government welfare reforms. That is part of the £1.4 billion that we have spent to support low-income households in 2018-19.
I fundamentally disagree with the UK Government’s refusal to support people who are over 75 to have free TV licences and its refusal to shoulder its responsibility. I am not alone in that view: recent reports from committees in the House of Commons and the House of Lords state that welfare policy is not the responsibility of the BBC. There have been two petitions upholding that view. The UK Parliament debated the issue on 15 July after a petition reached almost 172,000 signatures, but the UK Government did not alter its position and continues to blame the BBC. On 1 August, Age UK handed a petition to 10 Downing Street in which more than 630,000 people voiced their disapproval of the policy.
It is interesting that the Office for Budget Responsibility has also raised concerns about the policy. In July, it published its annual “Fiscal risks report”, in which it said:
“shifting the burden of a welfare benefit ... to the BBC to reduce the deficit appears likely to have fiscally costly unintended consequences”.
The fiscal risks report highlights that pension credit claims increased in the four weeks immediately following the BBC’s announcement. The Scottish Government wants older people to claim what they are entitled to, having worked all their lives, but it is not the BBC’s role to become involved in welfare policy and encourage people to sign up for the pension credit to which they are entitled.
The UK Government’s actions to evade its welfare responsibility will result in greater costs to the public purse. Linking the free TV licence to pension credit might actually increase the uptake of that benefit. We want eligible people to take up their benefits, but I point out, as the OBR pointed out, that if even 250,000 out of the 1.3 million people claim pension credit who did not previously do so, it will cost the Treasury an estimated £745 million. There is, therefore, not just a moral case but a strong financial case for reversing the policy.
Pension credit uptake is further impacted by the changes that the UK Government implemented on 15 May, which affect mixed-age couples where one partner is of pension age and the other is of working age. Pensioners will no longer be able to apply for pension credit if their partner is of working age. Instead, they will need to apply for the now notorious universal credit until the partner reaches state pension age. Our Scottish Government analysis has shown that that could lead to an annual loss of as much as £7,000 for affected couples, because pension credit entitlements are typically higher than universal credit. Our estimates indicate that in 2023-24 around 5,600 Scottish households could be affected by the policy.
Of course, women have been affected by other changes made by the UK Government. More than 2 million WASPI women—women against state pension inequality—paid their national insurance contributions in the full expectation that they would receive their state pension at a certain age, only for the goalposts to be moved by the UK Government. They will now be forced to work longer and they will be doubly affected by the changes for mixed-age couples.
Ultimately, all those welfare changes impact on people’s lives: those aged over 75 will now have the automatic benefit of a free TV licence ripped away. Some might be able to afford to fill the gap every month, but many thousands will be worrying about the choices that they will have to make when it comes to their monthly outgoings if they have to pay the licence fee. Forcing people to make difficult choices about what they can and cannot afford is not right.
For many people, TV is a lifeline. We know that older people in our society are at greater risk of social isolation and loneliness, as the Labour Party amendment, which we will support, points out. They might not be able to get out and about as much. TV provides a link to what is going on in the world. It offers people the chance to be entertained and to escape. Viewing figures from Ofcom show that people over 54 watch the most TV of any age group in Scotland—around five and a half hours a day on average. Access to television allows older people to enjoy educational documentaries, listen to news and current affairs, hear stories and see images of countries that they have never visited. TV can expand people’s knowledge and horizons. It can provide shared experiences, connection and entertainment for people to talk about with their families. There is a need for companionship, friendship and connection and older people need that as much as anybody else.
Destructive policies such as the one that was proposed and is being implemented by the UK Government will cause only harm to people who are trying to enjoy their retirement after a long working life.
In Scotland, the largest increase in population over the past few years has been in the over-75 age group, and the numbers are projected to further increase. It is inexcusable to allow or support policies that disadvantage our older people, who have already contributed so much and continue to contribute.
The Scottish Government supports our older people, yet our ambitions are negatively impacted by Westminster, time and time again. The UK Government’s social policies should be funded by the UK Government. Licence fee funds should be devoted to delivering the BBC’s public purposes, including the purpose to
“help people understand and engage with the world around them”,
which is vital for older people.
Public service broadcasting should be universally accessible, and older people should not be denied their part in that. Let me be absolutely clear—in the 2015 BBC charter renewal settlement, the UK Government gave the BBC a Trojan horse, paving the way for public service broadcasting to be undermined by creating conditions that weaken the public broadcasting model.