News & Insights

The Week in Parliament

On Wednesday this week the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport the newly ennobled Baroness (Nicky) Morgan of Cotes announced a new Government consultation on proposals to decriminalise licence fee evasion, to be replaced with a yet-to-be-determined civil enforcement mechanism. For any who are unfamiliar with present arrangements, each year every household that wishes to watch live television as it is being broadcast, or to watch video on demand from the BBC must pay a licence fee (currently £154.50 for colour television or £52 for black and white). The money raised from this, approximately £3.8bn a year, is used to fund the services provided by the BBC, whether television, radio or online. If said fee is not paid then an individual may be prosecuted and subject to a fine. The Government has long trailed its plans to consider the decriminalisation of licence fee evasion, and it will be very interesting to watch how things proceed and how the public responds to this new consultation. It is not the first time in recent memory that it has been raised. In 2015 an attempt was made, but the Government’s proposals were killed in the House of Lords by a narrow 178-175 vote against. We will keep an eye on how it fares this time round. We would not necessarily expect it to be the last BBC related consultation we see in this Parliamentary term either. With Lord Hall stepping down as Director-General in the summer of this year, the BBC will be in a period of some vulnerability as the process of selecting and acclimatising a new D-G happens. Combine that with the fact that certain powerful individuals within the Government have expressed willingness to embrace radical change in the BBC, including potentially the abolition of the licence fee entirely, and we would not be surprised to see other pretty fundamental elements of the BBC’s remit coming under consultation.

Only one bill of particular interest this week, Lord Harris of Haringey’s Duty to Plan for Terrorism (Consultation) Bill, although I am going to give that a piece in and of itself, as there is a lot to talk about there. We have also had this week the first draw of private members bills from the lower House. As of yet most have not been published, so it may be that there are some little gems in there. If there are, expect a bumper edition next week! We are also expecting next week the Lords Committee stage of the Drones Bill about which Rhion wrote last week, which we hope will provide some interesting debate around both the issues that Rhion raised in his piece, and also about whether the Government should have re-consulted after the Gatwick incident in December 2018.

As always, if you have any questions, or would like to discuss anything further, please drop me a line on StephenH@consultationinstitute.org

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