Free Television Licences (Hansard, 15 November 1990)

§ 1. Mr. Winnick
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on Government policy towards the provision of free television licences for pensioners.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Peter Lloyd)
We have no plans to introduce free licences for pensioners or to extend the present concessionary arrangements.

§ Mr. Winnick
Although the licence fee is excellent value and far better than any alternative scheme, is the Minister aware of the strong feeling of many pensioners that they should not have to pay the full sum? Is he also aware that two thirds of pensioner households are on low incomes? Why do the Government give every concession to the rich, but deny poor pensioners the concession for which Labour Members ask? Is it any wonder that the Government are so detested?

§ Mr. Lloyd
I wonder whether the hon. Member would think it fair, when many pensioners are well off and many non-pensioners have low incomes, for £435 million which would otherwise go to the BBC to be spent in that way, with the result that low-income families would have to pay 50 per cent. more for their licences, up to £107. Is that fair?

§ Dame Jill Knight
Does my hon. Friend agree that if the suggestion of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) were followed, hundreds of thousands of extremely wealthy people over the ages of 60 and 65 would get handouts from the taxpayer and that if any Government were to subsidise pleasure we should be on a slippery slope?

§ Mr. Lloyd
I agree with my hon. Friend and so, I believe, does the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher). I regret that the hon. Gentleman is not in his place. He made it clear in a letter to The Guardian that there was no question of exempting pensioners who were able to pay. My hon. Friend is right to say that if money is available it should be used for projects which benefit the lower paid and are targeted on them. That is why, in October last, we increased the pensioner addition to income support by £200 million.

§ Mr. Maginnis
Is the Secretary of State aware that, more than the question of free television licences, it is the nature of programmes which gives offence to pensioners, and that this problem should be tackled? Is he aware that deep offence was caused on 1 November, during a by-election in Dungannon district council, when on voting day the BBC transmitted a programme which highlighted the fact that the previous member for the seat had been shot by security forces when on IRA activity, and——

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must relate his supplementary question to television licences for pensioners.

§ Mr. Maginnis
I am talking about the offence given to pensioners and the deep upset caused to them by news items such as these.

§ Mr. Lloyd
I think that that supplementary falls very much on the edge of the issue raised by the question. I understand the feelings expressed by the hon. Member, but they are matters not for me but for the Broadcasting Complaints Commission and the Broadcasting Standards Council, which have been set up to look at issues of that kind.

§ Mr. Holt
When my constituent Mrs. Littlefair received notification that, along with all her neighbours, she had been given a concessionary licence, she was naturally delighted. However, she received a further letter saying that, because of the inefficiences of Middlesbrough council, the bureaucratic bungling in the Home Office and the intransigence of the advice given by my hon. Friend, her concessionary licence was taken away, as were those of her three immediate neighbours, but not those of any of the other people. I have now been asked by the chief executive of Middlesbrough to bring in the ombudsman to see whether he will investigate the way in which Middlesbrough council has failed in its duty and the Home Office has been so intransigent.

§ Mr. Lloyd
I have much sympathy for my hon. Friend's constitutent, but the law gives no opportunity for Ministers to grant a concessionary licence when the individual concerned does not fall within the rules. The individual must be in a property which falls within the rules or have had a concessionary licence prior to the relevant date. If the individual did not have one but understood from Middlesbrough council that he or she would have one, that one was in force or that one was applied for, the remedy surely lies with the council. That, however, is a matter for my hon. Friend to pursue.

§ Mr. Corbett
Do not the supplementary question of the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) and other comments on this issue demonstrate that the concessionary licence scheme is arbitrary and unfair as between pensioner neighbours?

§ Mr. Ashby
Abolish the concession.

§ Mr. Corbett
Yes. The Government did not have the bottle to do that, but I agree that that is what they wanted to do.
Is the Minister aware that when a flat in a block occupied by pensioners is taken by a person under pensionable age, all the other pensioner residents lose the concession? Will the hon. Gentleman undertake to put that right?

§ Mr. Lloyd
The concession is carefully drawn to ensure that pensioners living in the equivalent of residential care, in warden-controlled or sheltered accommodation, may have the concession. As the rule has to be clear and understandable at law, and not challenged at law, the detail must be set out clearly. There can be no concessions for those who fall outside the rule. It is regrettable that that is so, but it is necessary for local authorities to organise themselves so that their tenants can take advantage of the scheme and to ensure that they do not let accommodation of the kind to which the hon. Gentleman referred to people not of pensionable age. That is the remedy and the solution.