Labour will support the BBC licence fee, Keir Starmer has pledged, in stark contrast to the years of Conservative opposition to the funding model.
The levy of £159 a year on households with a television used to receive live broadcasts (or watch BBC iPlayer) raises £3.2bn annually for the BBC and the Welsh channel S4C.
The number of households that pay the fee is declining and countries around the world are phasing out their television licence fees. Conservative ministers have spent the past 14 years reducing the broadcaster’s licence fee income, which resulted in a 30% budget cut in real terms. As culture secretary, Nadine Dorries sought to abolish the licence fee entirely when the broadcaster’s royal charter expires in 2027.
“We are committed in our manifesto to the BBC and to the licensing scheme,” the prime minister said. “There’s going to be some more thought between now and [2027], but we are committed.”
The Conservative government and the BBC agreed on a six-year deal that froze the licence fee for two years with annual increases set to follow inflation from 2024 until March 2028 – a deal Tories reneged on in December when it cut the planned inflation-linked rise.
To compensate for this two-year freeze, the BBC had to make severe cuts to its programming to shore up the £500m in annual savings needed, which included limiting the current affairs programme Newsnight to “interview and debate” and reducing its running time to 30 minutes.
“For years, the BBC has lived with uncertainty and barely veiled threats about its future from successive Conservative prime ministers dog-whistling to their base,” said Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster. “For Sir Keir to give such an early and unequivocal statement of support for both the BBC as an institution as well its public funding is a huge step forward.”
While Barnett said the public must “wait and see whether this support extends to the level of funding required to keep the BBC as a valued, trusted and universal British institution”, he said the prime minister’s statement of was a “breath of fresh air compared to the last 14 years of deep funding cuts accompanied by barely concealed hostility”.
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A BBC spokesperson said: “We remain totally focused on offering value to the public and will engage with the government on funding at the appropriate time.”
