Free TV licences for pensioners update as minister ‘to issue statement’ | Personal Finance | Finance

A campaign pressing for all pensioners to automatically be given free TV licences has made a major step forward. The government will have to issue a formal response after support for the petition on the Parliament website surged past a key threshold.

Now almost 20,000 people have signed up to the call, which can be read here, and once a petition gets to 10,000, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport must respond.

This year the standard UK TV Licence rose to £180 per year. A black-and-white only licence costs £60.50. To get a free TV licence as a pensioner in the UK, the person or their partner at the same address must be aged 75 or older and either must be receiving Pension Credit.

Universal free TV licences for 3.7m pensioners aged 75 and over officially ended on July 31, 2020. At the time the BBC said funding free TV licences for all over-75s would have resulted in ‘unprecedented closures’.

The petition says: “We want the Government to fund free TV licences for existing pensioners and those who reach the official retirement age. When people reach retirement age, we think they should receive a state-financed free TV licence.

“Many pensioners live on the breadline with only the TV for company. With the cost of food soaring and utility bills ever higher, we feel there is a desperate need to provide all pensioners with at least this concession.

“We feel it is a double outrage that those who have given their all to this country in taxes and raising children have to pay a TV licence fee and are only exempt if they receive means-tested Pension Credit. Meanwhile, some media figures draw huge salaries.”

A government review of the BBC’s Royal Charter is underway, specifically examining its funding. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has already labelled the licence fee “unenforceable” and “insufficient”.

The BBC has said that it is “willing to consider radical options for future funding”. Last month, the new director-general of the BBC said the corporation will have to make “some difficult choices about its size and shape” in the future.

Former Google boss Matt Brittin also revealed that the BBC has begun working on changes regarding its output, such as programmes and services, due to changes in consumer behaviour.

Mr Brittin steps into the role during a turbulent time for the corporation as it looks to slash 2,000 jobs to try to reduce costs by 10% over the next three years.

Mr Brittin, 57, said the BBC must “serve its content into the digital environment”, adding: “We’ve got to make some choices about how to do that. Can we do it more efficiently?”

He added: “I think people trust journalists, individuals like yourselves and others at the BBC, to be there and explain the complicated world to them.

“We’ve got to find the right way to do that to take the values that the BBC has always had and reinterpret them for the modern world.

“How do we reinvent this institution to serve in today’s moment?”

To view and sign up to the petition click here.