Spare BBC licence fee money should be refunded Any spare money paid for the BBC licence fee should be returned to the public rather than used to bail out Channel 4 as this would be "wrong in principle", according to the chairman of the BBC's governing body Sir Michael Lyons.
Sir Michael Lyons, the head of the BBC Trust, said the £130m surplus which will be generated by the switchover to digital television should not automatically be "siphoned off" for other "causes and commercial players". The BBC's digital switchover surplus is a pot of money taken from licence fee payments which has been allocated to supply set top boxes to older and disabled people. The money has been ringfenced until 2012 and there have been calls for it to be extended to fund other projects such as universal broadband roll out or help solve Channel 4's funding deficit. Lord Carter, the technology minister, is expected to make a final decision in his Digital Britain report next month. But in a speech last night, Sir Michael said the money belonged to the public and was "not the Government's, not political parties', not other regulators'". He said that research has indicated that most people would like the money to be refunded directly to them and any redirection would be an act of "bad faith". In a speech to the Royal Television Society, he said: "People would do well to remember that licence fee payers give us their money in good faith, believing it will be spent on BBC services and content. "To suddenly tell them midway through the settlement that their money is being siphoned off, as some have suggested it should be, would be more than an act of bad faith, it would be tantamount to breaking a contract. "We know what the public would like to happen to any surplus. Ofcom's own research shows this clearly. They'd like their money back. As far as the Trust is concerned, returning any surplus to licence fee payers is the benchmark against which any other proposal should be judged." Sir Michael said the Trust had an important role in acting as "guardianshipof the public interest in the BBC" which he said "includes seeing off opportunistic attempts to spend the licence fee on things that have nothing to do with the BBC's public purposes." He said: "The licence fee should only be used to enable the BBC to deliver its public purposes. The digital switchover help scheme is consistent with that. The roll out and take up of universal broadband may be consistent with that. We'll see. "But taking licence fee payers' money and giving it to other causes and commercial players clearly isn't. It's wrong in principle, it undermines the BBC's accountability to licence fee payers, and it risks compromising the BBC's independence." He launched an attack on those who argue for shorter licence fee settlements, like David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who is pressing for the licence fee to be frozen at £139.50 – rather than an increase to £142.50 – at a Commons vote today. The Tories believe it is unfair to increase the fee when the country is in a recession. Sir Michael said this move, carried "potentially serious implications for the independence of the BBC". He warned it was a "recipe for curbing the editorial independence of the BBC". "The traditional system of multiyear funding agreements – the current one runs for six years –underpins the BBC's editorial independence.. It means that BBC journalists, for example, never have to trim to the short-term prevailing political wind in order to avoid upsetting the latest licence fee negotiation. It is very important that the BBC's horizons do not become too closely entwined with the political cycle." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5351132/Spare-BBC-licence-fee-money-should-be-refunded.html - Jaisakthivel, Chennai, India Cricket on your mind? Visit the ultimate cricket website. Enter http://beta.cricket.yahoo.com ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- Order your WRTH 2009: http://www.hard-core-dx.com/redirect2.php?id=wrth2009 ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/dsl.html
