§ Mr. WoodTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (1) how many pensioner households in England and Wales receive a free television licence; [32720]
(2) what was the cost of providing free television licences to pensioner households in England and Wales in the last 12 months. [32718]
§ Dr. HowellsTV Licensing, which administers for the BBC as Licensing Authority the free television licence concession for the over-75s, is not able to provide a breakdown by nation of the number of free licences currently in force in the United Kingdom. However, in the 12 months to December 2001, 3.398 million free licences were issued in England and Wales. The cost of these licences was £335 million, excluding administrative costs.
The cost of administering the concession in England and Wales cannot be disaggregated from the total for the United Kingdom, since much of it is systems-related and applies to the scheme as a whole. The estimated cost of administering the scheme throughout the United Kingdom in the months to December 2001 was £10.1 million.