MPs lack awareness over decriminalising licence fee evasion

As MPs look set to try to decriminalise evasion of the BBC licence fee, Raymond Snoddy says – like other swiftly passed laws – it shows a complete lack of awareness of the possible consequences.

The trouble with politicians is that they rarely join up the dotted lines…that reveal the consequences of their actions.

For the sake of brevity we will call the phenomenon Dangerous Dog Legislation – the swift passing of laws in reaction to events that seem sensible at the time but have unfortunate long-term consequences.

This week’s perfect example of the genre is the move to decriminalise evasion of the BBC licence fee. Another is the all-party support for the press regulation in the UK to be underpinned by Royal Charter, an idea celebrating its first anniversary.

The possibility of decriminalising licence fee evasion in its current iteration was first raised by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling earlier this month.

The idea has been potentially fast-tracked by winning the support of at least 150 MPs. It is likely to be debated this week as part of the Deregulation Bill, and could be on the way to law before the month is out by way of an amendment.

What could be more simple, and who could stand in the way of such a rational and humanitarian move?

According to Grayling 12 per cent of the workload in Magistrates Courts is taken up by such prosecutions with more than 180,000 summoned to court for the offence last year.

Then there is the criminal record for otherwise law-abiding citizens, among them – though far from exclusively – the poorest in the land faced with a poll tax on television.

In fact, the court-clogging arguments seem questionable at best. The cases, according to TV Licensing, are dealt with in batches in special sessions which few of the accused attend. The BBC insists that such prosecutions actually account for 0.3 per cent of court time.

The issue remains of anyone having to face the possibility of going to jail for non-payment of the fine and this actually happens to around 50 people a year.

Surely getting rid of even the possibility of going to jail for such a reason in the age of the internet can’t happen a moment too soon?

The problem, as always, arises with the consequences.

The BBC claims, and there is little doubt about it, that remove the criminal threat – as in breaking the law – and fewer people will pay. Chasing evaders through the civil courts would be much more problematical than Magistrates Courts.

We can be sure of one “fact” and that is a one per cent rise in licence fee evasion leads to the loss of around £35 million a year to the BBC.

The Corporation estimates that it could lose up to £200 million as a result of the change in the law. It’s impossible to predict in advance but the number does not seem unreasonably fanciful.

If the word spreads that more and more people are, in effect, getting away with it, evasion could snowball with serious consequences.

If MPs are willing to take full responsibility for their actions and compensate the BBC for any deficit caused by increasing the licence fee by an appropriate amount, then fair enough. But don’t hold your breath.

The reality is it would be another piece of casual, almost careless damage to the BBC that threatens to diminish its role.

The latest threat to the proper funding of the BBC comes at the same time as a major report on the importance of the creative industries to the UK economy from Enders Analysis and Bain & Company.

They found that the creative industries are at the heart of the digital transformation of the UK economy and that in the television sector Britain is the world’s leading exporter of television formats and is headquarters to six of the 10 largest global production groups.

And one of those – in a way a central one, in terms of both impact and training – is the BBC.

The way forward is obvious. Look at all aspects of the funding of the BBC, how any licence fee should be charged, collected and enforced as part of the overall Royal Charter debate. Anything else would be the equivalent of Dangerous Dog Legislation.

The creation of a Royal Charter for the press is another apparently sensible idea that isn’t, because of the danger of long-term consequences.

How is it possible to argue such a case when more than 200 of the great and good of British society, writers, philosophers, and even a few journalists have supported a Royal Charter in advertisements appearing this week in the press.

Such a constellation of talents assembled by the pressure group Hacked Off range from the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, whose work includes one of the best plays on the newspaper industry – Night and Day.

In it Milne says: “No matter how imperfect things are, if you’ve got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.

Ruth: “I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand.”

Strange that writers and journalists, however distinguished, should be in favour of what in effect is a special law for the press and one that could be abused by future politicians.

It would not be accepted for a second under the first amendment to the US constitution, still the gold standard on press freedom that countries like the UK can only aspire to.

Very clever people are more than capable of signing up to some very silly things, especially in round robin letters, or advertisements, in the press.

In case you haven’t noticed the first Hacked Off intellectual celebrity ad appeared at the same time as the report of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, which says it represents 30,000 newspapers and online news sites around the world.

After a visit to the UK their investigatory team found that newspaper industry fears that the new regulatory system could interfere with their ability to publish freely were “well founded.”

The report noted the lack of an explicit legal protection for press freedom in the UK and highlighted the Government’s intervention in the case of the Guardian’s Snowden hard disks.

The group also expressed concern that the Government’s policy risks were “an open invitation” for abuse in other parts of the world where it could be followed by countries which lack the UK’s strong record of free speech.

The trouble with Dangerous Dog Legislation is always the lack of awareness of the possible consequences.