My Lords, this has been an extremely interesting debate and comes, as your Lordships’ debates so often do, with a great deal of experience. A television licence is required to watch all live and nearly-live broadcast television content on any device in the United Kingdom. People should not seek to evade this and there needs to be an effective enforcement regime for the failure to have a TV licence.
Clause 64 confers a new power on the Secretary of State, via secondary legislation, to change the sanctions that apply to the failure to have a TV licence. There was significant cross-party support for the TV licensing clauses in the early stages of the Bill in the other place. We believe that the firm commitments set out by the Government at that time should be honoured, particularly given the strong cross-party support. Whatever opinion your Lordships take, the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, made often came to the heart of the dilemma in how we take this matter forward. I will be raising that in greater detail.
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This is a matter that concerns a lot of people. The Government are very clear that the review of the licensing enforcement regime should therefore be a
priority. The decision was taken to begin this review in advance of Royal Assent, while retaining the clause that commits the Government to carrying out the review to ensure that this important work is completed. I am particularly mindful of the concerns that a number of your Lordships have raised about this review: as a stalking horse for bigger issues such as broader funding and income and, probably worse still, about an undermining of the BBC. It is therefore important that I should at least seek to address your Lordships’ concerns head-on by stating unequivocally that the review of the licensing enforcement regime is no such thing; it is an independent review, set up to deliver recommendations and the best outcomes for the licence fee payer, the courts system and, I emphasise, the BBC itself.
The independent lead reviewer, David Perry QC, is working to tightly defined terms of reference which set out the scope of his work. The key aspects of the terms of reference in this context are that any recommendation must be made on the basis of delivering:
“Value for money for Licence Fee payers and tax payers in enforcement of the failure to have a TV Licence, including operational, revenue and investment costs of the enforcement regime to the BBC”.
That latter point is crucial here: any recommendation made by the Perry review will be made on the basis of revenue and cost to the BBC, and will include considerations such as the amount of licence fee that the BBC has to spend on enforcement. As such, any decision made by the Government of the day to adopt these recommendations will be grounded in these considerations, too.
The review is designed to ensure that there is a strong, evidence-based case for any potential changes to the TV licence enforcement regime. It will not consider any other changes, such as the cost of the licence fee. The review will begin imminently, with formal stakeholder engagement and public consultation. This will be an opportunity for the public, as well as the BBC and other parties, to feed into the review. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is absolutely right: my understanding is that the BBC is very welcoming of discussion and dialogue, as I would expect.
The findings of the review, which will be completed this June, will be laid before both Houses of Parliament and presented to the BBC Trust. A number of your Lordships, including the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and my noble friends Lord Grade and Lord Inglewood, raised the issue of the findings. To reaffirm what I said in Committee, I emphasise again that the findings will be considered in the context of the charter review. As your Lordships know, the BBC’s current charter expires on 31 December 2016. The Government will not begin the charter review until after the election, so there is no set process for how the review of the charter should be conducted, or when. It will be for the Government of the day to take forward any further actions they see fit.
Clause 64 provides for the sanctions to be changed, either by replacing the criminal regime with a civil regime, with civil monetary penalties payable to the BBC, or by creating a civil regime that sits alongside the criminal regime as an alternative to prosecution,
establishing powers to impose a fixed or variable money penalty in relation to a TV licensing offence. Clearly, we must not prejudge Mr Perry in his making of recommendations, and it will be for the Government of the day to decide whether they wish to implement any changes to the current system. However, I reassure noble Lords that the clause does not mean that any changes can or would be instantly applied without the requisite scrutiny and debate. This House would have a further opportunity to scrutinise and approve any proposed changes when considering any regulations made under Clause 64. I hope that that point will help, even if only a little, my noble friend Lord Fowler and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. Your Lordships’ House and the other place will need to consider all these matters.
Let me go to the heart of the issue about the dates. The noble Baroness’s proposed amendment would prevent any such changes from taking place before 1 April 2017. Of course I understand the concerns that have been presented by noble Lords seeking to protect the BBC. However, any conclusions and recommendations from the review will have been reached through careful consideration of the benefits to the licence fee payer and the BBC. It will therefore not be in their interests to put constraints on taking forward the implementation of the recommendations. As I have already set out, this is an independent evidence-based review, with clearly defined terms of reference that include the need to consider value for money,
“including operational, revenue and investment costs of the enforcement regime to the BBC”.
However, I emphasise that this is not about cutting costs. The review will also be considering fairness for all licence fee payers and the effectiveness of deterring evasion. Crucially, value-for-money considerations must also encompass the level of licence fee money spent on TV licensing enforcement. If there is potentially an issue with the current regime—obviously we make no assumptions about this while the review is still under way—it can surely benefit no one, least of all the licence fee payers and the BBC, to prevent its findings from informing any required change to the existing system as soon as is reasonable. Our concern is that the amendment would potentially prevent the Government, post election, from being able to ensure that the right enforcement regime for the BBC, licence fee payers and the courts, and probably particularly for the sort of people that the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, has referred to, can be put in place following—I emphasise this—the appropriate parliamentary processes.
On the issue of timing, this will not be an immediate process. The issue cannot be seen in isolation. The report’s findings and future implementation on the part of the Government will require serious consideration in the broader context of the charter review. I think that this is what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, was referring to; I think that his word was “immediate”. This is not going to mean immediate implementation in June 2015; that is only when the recommendations will be received. So not only is this in the broader context of the charter review but any recommendations made by Mr Perry will have considered the impact on the BBC and whether
those options would represent an improvement to the current regime. That is clearly set out in the terms of reference.
Being too restrictive in aligning the timing of any changes with the charter review and the licence fee settlement would place unreasonable constraints on the Government of the day that we believe would not represent the best approach for the licence fee payer, and indeed the BBC. In short, should Mr Perry’s review identify potential changes to be made that could, for instance, deliver a better system for the BBC, how could it be to the benefit of the corporation, or indeed licence fee payers or the courts system, to impose any delay in implementing those options?