Chris

Not at all - it’s arguably just a more honest way of reflecting what is already the case. The licence fee is supposed to be universal, insofar as everyone who has a TV has a licence. The licence fee funds the BBC because the BBC provides the marker for quality public service broadcasting, serving both mass and niche audiences, across TV, radio and web. Parliament has repeatedly determined that this is a public good, worthy of funding by public means, by regular renewal of the BBC’s charter.

Regardless of how the money is spent, or by whom, the licence fee simply is not a simple subscription to the BBC. It never has been. To hold that it is, simply hinders understanding of why the BBC is not ever going to disappear behind a subscription paywall. In return for being funded this way the BBC is obliged to fulfil charter obligations that ensure a broad public service and also prevent the other commercial operators from pursuing a race to the bottom, chasing only mass audiences and serving them content made as cheaply as possible. (If you think this is fanciful, try visiting the USA and watching what’s actually on their free-to-air tv services on a weekday evening. It’s appalling.).

A thing does not have to be equally virtuous as a hospital in order to be worthy of public funding. We fund libraries out of council tax; national museums are funded by central government tax funds. This is the category the BBC has been put in by parliament’s repeated renewal of the BBC charter. Changes in technology may now mean the licence fee mechanism is no longer fit for purpose but it does not follow that the concept of publicly funded, public service broadcasting is no longer fit for purpose. A different means of collecting public funds may be required, and a precept on council tax is a way of doing it.