My Lords, I support the amendment. I spoke on this matter in Committee, when the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, made the points he has just made about the £200 million shortfall that could well result. I have not seen that figure challenged in the months since. It is something that we have to take very seriously.
I do not want to reiterate the points made very eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and my noble friend Lord Lipsey, but I want to refer to the letter that the noble Baroness mentioned. I have a copy here. It is dated 21 October 2010 and is from the then Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt, to Sir Michael Lyons, then chairman of the BBC Trust. It includes the important quote:
“The Government undertakes to provide a full financial settlement to the end of the year 2016/17, with no new financial requirements or fresh obligations of any kind being placed on the BBC and/or licence fee revenues in this period except by mutual agreement”.
We know that the BBC has not agreed to any such reduction, so that is one point. The other point is that in another part of the letter, the Secretary of State says:
“I believe the agreement we have reached provides certainty and security for the BBC over the settlement period”.
I believe that the Government should be obliged because of that letter in the name of the Secretary of State to uphold what was contained in it. Frankly, unless the amendment is accepted, there is a grave risk—it is not certain, I accept—that that will be the effect.
Whether or not the licence fee even has a future—personally, I very much hope it has—we do not know, but we do know that there are more than two years of the current licence fee period to run. The sort of shortfall that the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, mentioned is important, as is the 13% reduction in the licence fee because of it being frozen since 2010. The effect of that has to be taken into consideration. For those reasons, I believe that the Government are obliged to accept the amendment because only by doing that can they ensure that they uphold the commitment given by Jeremy Hunt in 2010.