Britain has announced that the BBC Licence will be abolished by 2028, putting to an eventual end ‘elderly being threatened with prison’ over avoiding the tax.
The UK government has announced that the nation will be scrapping the TV Licence that funds the British Broadcasting Corporation sometime in 2027, with the BBC being forced to find a new funding model from 2028.
How the UK’s public broadcaster will be funded after that point has yet to be decided, with the UK Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, suggesting that the organisation may need to make some cuts to become more competitive.
“The days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors are over,” Dorries said according to The Times. “Time now to discuss and debate new ways of funding, supporting and selling great British content.”
“There will be a lot of anguished noises about how it will hit popular programmes, but they can learn to cut waste like any other business,” the Daily Mail meanwhile reports a parliament ally of Dorries as saying.
Dorries also announced that the licence fee will be frozen at its current value of £159 for the next two years until 2024. The cost of the licence is set to subsequently rise after that point, though the Mail claims the government is considering setting the hike below the rate of inflation.
“Anything less than inflation would put unacceptable pressure on the BBC finances after years of cuts,” said a spokesman from the BBC regarding the matter, who claimed that there remained good reason to invest “in what the BBC can do for the British public, and the creative industries and the UK around the world”.
Some Tory backbenchers worry, however, that the two-year freeze doesn’t go far enough.
“There will be many MPs on the backbenches who will be deeply disappointed that we are looking at just a two-year freeze in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis,” Julian Knight told the The Times.
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