BBC licence fee targets women, claims Culture Secretary

Telegraph

25-04-2025

The BBC licence fee unfairly targets women, Lisa Nandy has declared.
The Culture Secretary said there were 'problems' with the annual fee and that women had been unfairly targeted for not paying it in the past.
In her strongest criticisms of the tax to date, Ms Nandy went on to insist that a 'fairer' and 'more sustainable' funding model must be found, declaring the current system 'unenforceable'.
A formal review of the BBC's Royal Charter, which sets out the agreement between the broadcaster and the Government, will be launched in the coming months.
The current charter expires at the end of 2027 and Ms Nandy has faced calls to use the review to make the £174.50-a-year fee voluntary or abolish it entirely.
In an interview with the Telegraph, Ms Nandy was asked how the existence of the licence fee could be justified and that the Government would be reviewing the licence fee ahead of the Charter review.
She said: 'We recognise there are problems with the licence fee. Fewer and fewer people are paying it.
'It's unenforceable and particularly I've been very concerned about the way it's been enforced in the past, with women – particularly vulnerable women – targeted for enforcement action, and the BBC itself has accepted that.
'So we know that there are problems with the licence fee system as it currently exists. We're about to kick off the Charter review… and as part of that we're reviewing the licence fee.'
Women are more likely than men to be prosecuted over TV licence evasion.
Research in 2019 found that women accounted for 74 per cent of the 114,000 convictions for licence fee evasion, representing 30 per cent of all convictions for women in that year.
Meanwhile an investigation by the Telegraph in 2021 found that official letters have been sent to elderly people threatening them with criminal convictions for non-payment of the licence fee.
Tens of thousands of people are prosecuted and convicted for non-payment of the licence fee every year.
The fee rose by £5 this month as Labour pledged to increase payments in line with inflation every year until 2027.
Power 'in the public's hands'
Insisting that 'no options are off the table', Ms Nandy added: 'We're open to a different system, but we haven't put forward any preferred options at this stage.
'We want the public to get involved in the conversation, and we want your readers to be able to tell us what they think a fairer, more sustainable system would look like.
'We know that the licence fee and the BBC as a whole has to command public support in order to survive and thrive, and that's why we're putting the power back into the public's hands to be able to drive that conversation.'
Options for future BBC funding models include a Netflix-style subscription service.
Senior media figures including Mark Thompson, a former director-general of the public broadcaster, have supported this idea.
Earlier this year, Ms Nandy explicitly ruled out funding the broadcaster through general taxation.
Samir Shah, the chairman of the BBC, last month suggested that wealthier households should have to pay more for the broadcaster's services.
BBC sources noted 80 per cent of households pay the licence fee. They pointed to two independent reviews that concluded 'societal factors' led to the gender disparity seen in prosecutions.
A BBC spokesman said: 'The public cares about the BBC and we have launched our biggest ever public engagement exercise, so audiences can help drive and shape what they want from a universal and independent BBC in the future.
'We want to continue to reform and evolve and look forward to engaging with Government on the next Charter and securing the long-term future of the BBC.'
Ms Nandy also addressed last week's Supreme Court ruling that transgender women are not legally women.
During a Labour leadership campaign event in 2020, she said trans women were women and trans men were men who should be 'accommodated in a prison of their choosing'.
But asked whether she stood by those remarks, Ms Nandy replied: 'I did also say as part of the same sentence that I thought the Gender Recognition Act largely struck the right balance.'
Ms Nandy said safety was always her 'paramount consideration' and that the court ruling made it 'absolutely clear' that decisions about prisoners must now be based on biology.
She added: 'That means that trans women will be accommodated in male prisons and trans men will be accommodated in female prisons.
'There are safety concerns on both of those fronts and we're working with the prison authorities, despite the overcrowding crisis that we inherited from the last government, to make sure that we can navigate this in a way that keeps people safe.'
Ms Nandy said that before the ruling, trans women who had been through a gender recognition process would be treated as a woman for the purposes of the law.
'The Supreme Court ruling has made crystal clear that that is not the case. And so, yes, I have changed my view of the legislation… and I welcome the clarity,' she added.
Pressed on whether she still believed trans women were women, she replied: 'I think the Supreme Court ruling is absolutely clear that biology is the determinant when it comes to the law. So, for legal purposes, trans women are not women.
'But I do think that trans people should be treated with dignity and respect, and that for people who are living in a gender other than their own, we have to find ways to include them and accommodate them in society.'
Ms Nandy also vowed to protect the arts after a backlash to new proposals that would allow big tech companies to use copyrighted material to train AI software unless the rights holder explicitly opted out. She said she recognised the 'serious concerns amongst the creative industry' about the proposals.
'And that's why Peter [Kyle] and I are working with them to design a system that works for them. If it doesn't work for the creatives, it doesn't work for us, and we're happy to give that guarantee,' she said.
Ms Nandy was also challenged on the protracted sale of The Telegraph more than a year after Parliament effectively blocked an attempted Abu Dhabi takeover.
She said her quasi-judicial role in the review meant she was unable to comment on the process, but went on to say she did not want to be 'prescriptive' about the right threshold for foreign ownership of newspapers.
She added: 'We want to make sure we don't deter investment, but we also recognise that the media has a unique place in British society.'