UK NEWS

Boris goes to WAR with BBC over the licence fee

15 December, 2019
David Clews

Boris Johnson is going into battle with the BBC by putting in place plans to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee.

The Prime Minister has asked his top advisers to draw up a review of the compulsory £154.50 annual fee and whether viewers should be prosecuted for not paying it.

Conservatives were pulled from yesterday’s Radio 4 slot and Number 10 intends to ‘withdraw engagement’ from future broadcasts of the show due to what they perceive as the ‘Metroploitan bias’ of presenters such as Nick Robinson and Mishal Hussain.

Senior Tories were also infuriated by the lead item on Monday’s BBC News At Ten, which gave extensive coverage to the row over a four-year-old boy with suspected pneumonia forced to sleep on a hospital floor.

They say the Corporation failed to properly report the swing in support from Labour to the Tories along the ‘Red Wall’ in the Midlands and the North which swept Mr Johnson to victory on a tide of support for Brexit.

Last night, a No 10 source called on the BBC to mount an internal investigation into its performance during the campaign, saying: ‘The BBC speaks to a pro-Remain metropolitan bubble in Islington, not the real world represented by Wakefield and Workington.

The BBC angrily denies the allegations of bias. Senior figures in the Corporation describe the claims as ‘trumped up’ and part of an ‘agenda to use the new Tory majority to break the Corporation’s independence’.

Downing Street was also angered by Channel 4’s Election coverage after the channel replaced Boris Johnson with a melting ice sculpture when he declined to appear on its climate debate programme and falsely claimed he called immigrants ‘people of colour’ in a speech rather than ‘people of talent’.

A Number 10 source told The Sunday Telegraph:

The broadcasters – and the BBC and Channel 4 in particular – had a very poor Election and need to shake things up for future campaigns.’ Top election Guru Dominic Cummings has said that he no longer watches the flagship political programming of the BBC

There has been a failure by senior management at the BBC, and we expect them to launch an internal review of their performance.

The Today programme is irrelevant, it is not a serious programme any more so we are not going to engage with it – it is far better for us to put people up on BBC Breakfast and Five Live.

The Government declined to put up a Minister for interview on the programme yesterday morning, despite it being the first full day of the new Johnson administration.

During the Election campaign, Mr Johnson branded the £154.50- a-year licence a ‘tax’ and questioned how long such a funding system could be justified.

I think the system of funding by what is effectively a general tax… bears reflection.

How long can you justify a system whereby everybody who has a TV has to pay to fund a particular set of TV and radio channels? That is the question.

The No 10 source stressed that the proposed changes to the licence fee were unconnected to the row over bias, but were a long-held view of Mr Johnson and his closest aides.

The licence fee raised £3.69 billion for the BBC in 2019, out of its total budget of £5 billion.

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