James Purnell answers questions about decriminalising licence fee evasion
Hannah Khalil
Digital Content Producer, About The BBC Blog
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Following a press conference yesterday (11 March), BBC Director of Strategy James Purnell responded to questions from journalists regarding the ongoing debate about decriminalising TV licence fee evasion. The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, BBC News and the Guardian all reported on the subject.
In the Guardian, James said:
"The key question we need to think about is how do you persuade people to pay for something you can't stop them receiving. We don't know the evasion rates on utilities but from what we've seen about 10% of people are not able to pay bills ... that's just a guideline."
While the Telegraph considers the rate of evasion:
‘“Say the rate of evasion was to double from the 5 per cent it is now, that would be £200 million, or the equivalent of all of BBC Four, CBeebies and CBBC …The choice would be: either we take those services off or the Government would have to have a higher licence fee. It would be a huge risk to do it now.”’
Read the full reports on The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, BBC News and Guardian websites.
Hannah Khalil is Digital Content Producer, About the BBC Website and Blog.
