The Culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, has all but confirmed the BBC is to receive a below inflation rise to the licence fee.
The licence fee has been frozen at £159 for the last two years, if it were to rise with inflation as previously planned, it would go up by about £15 annually but Frazer has signalled this is unlikely to happen.
Frazer, during a round of interviews today, told Sky News that “We as a government have been really concerned about the cost of living for people across the country, and have taken a number of steps across the board to make sure that those costs are down… we want to make sure that it rises by an appropriate amount that people can afford.”
When asked by Sky News’s Kay Burley if the planned rise would not then happen, Ms Frazer said “I’m concerned about that level of rise. So, it’s something that we’re looking at very carefully.”
In an interview with BBC1’s Breakfast show, Frazer went on to say ““In broader terms overall my department is looking at how we fund the BBC going forward. It is unsustainable because 400,000 people did not renew their licence fee over the course of the last year. The media landscape is changing.
“We’re not consuming the BBC like we used to consume it, so I’m also looking at a broader review of how do we make the licence overall fairer to licence fee payers, and how do we maintain the amazing service that the BBC provides.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has previously said that the BBC should be “realistic about what it can expect people to pay” in times of high inflation and should “cut its cloth appropriately.”
Jon Creamer
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