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“We will maintain all other pensioner benefits including free bus passes, eye tests, prescriptions and TV licences, for the duration of this Parliament” stated the Conservative Party Manifesto of 2017 – a clear unconditional guarantee that for the full five years of the Parliament every pensioner over 75 would be guaranteed a free TV licence.

I introduced the free TV licence as part of the November 1999 Budget.

And as a result, 2019 will be the twentieth anniversary of our decision to exempt older pensioners from the licence fee.

This universal benefit for the elderly –now worth around £150 a year–was introduced for a very good reason.

Most of the new cash that was allocated to pensioners was devoted to the pension credit and allocated to the poor and nearly poor elderly.

These tax credits were the main vehicle for lifting a total of 2m pensioners out of poverty - and the main reason we were able to cut pensioner poverty from a disgraceful and shameful third of our elderly in 1997 to just over 10% as a result of decisions we made before 2010.

When we left office we were well on the way to abolishing pensioner poverty.

(Image: Getty)

But as we expanded help for the poor and near poor, we were determined to match this with an improvement in universal provision – to recognise the contribution all elderly citizens had made to our community, having served our country all their lives - many in war - we wanted to ensure for all dignity in retirement.

That is why over the 13 years we were in power we introduced a number of universal benefits - pensioner bus passes, expanded access to social care, the £200 Christmas bonus as well as free TV licences and re-linking pension rises again to earnings, a connection that had been broken after 1979.

The TV licence mattered not just because it took old people out of poverty but because access to a TV helps minimise isolation and loneliness for millions.

Indeed four out of ten older people have reported that TV is ‘their main company'.

(Image: Getty Images)

But in their new reports - a thinly disguised manifesto for paving the way for the abolition of free TV licences - the BBC and their hired hand Frontier Economics ignore completely this important consideration that is essential if we are to maintain public support for our welfare state - how at all times we need to balance targeted benefits that are needed to help the poorest with universal coverage that reflects the truth that we are a community and should be ‘all in this together ‘

This month in spite of a clear election promise to retain the free TV licence till 2022, the Government is putting that provision in jeopardy-and doing so in the most cowardly of ways.

Despite its election promise to protect free tv licences, the Government has washed its hands of the issue and has deliberately but shamefully transferred responsibility for deciding who of our pensioner community pays the licence fee or who does not pay to the BBC itself.

By amending the Communications Act of 2003 Section 365 the licence fee payment is to be ‘subject to any concession applying in accordance with a determination by the BBC’

And ,as it explicitly states, the BBC itself can amend 'the concession' , re-amend it or simply abandon it in its entirety for any elderly groups or any type of group - making the BBC for the first time a taxing authority which has the power to decide who pays and who does not.

While the Conservative election promise runs to 2022, the BBC are now to make a decision that, in the light of their own financial need to save £800m, could abandon the free over-75 licence as early as summer 2020 -a clear breach of promise by the Conservatives.

(Image: Getty Images/Maskot)

There are many ways the BBC could be better financed, but the way that is being chosen raises major issues of principle.

For the BBC consultation document does not only propose to break a promise made by the a Government subsequent to the Act – a promise that the BBC should not have the power to break - but suggests the BBC will now make decisions usually reserved for an elected Parliament.

They could tax the under 85s or under 80s, or means test all pensioners - decisions that I think should be made only by the people we elect.

In his book, Unelected Power, the ex-Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Tucker refers to central banks as one of the “great pillars of unelected power' and argues that the power that independent agencies - of which the BBC is one - hold in liberal democracies requires careful consideration.

Tucker develops a set of criteria for the independence of an institution.

These confirm the template we had in mind when we made the Bank independent in 1997 - that the limits and extent of mandate of any unelected body have to be defined clearly, that there must be clarity about the instruments it can use to achieve that mandate and that it must be held accountable for its effectiveness.

But, critically, he also says that first-order questions about the distribution of income in our society should be excluded from the remit of an unelected body. The powers should not include making judgment about who is to be taxed .

The BBC is an unelected body that was set up with specifed powers to run a broadcasting network. When it was created – and when its future was debated – no one put any upfront case suggesting that it should have the power under its constitution to make decisions on who is taxed and who is not.

Quite simply the BBC should not be making judgements about the distribution of income between social groups in our country.

This is, in effect, a matter for Parliament. To make the decision in the way the government and BBC propose is taxation without representation.

And what would it mean?

The BBC have had to admit they might decide to axe help to nearly 2m households with someone from 75 to 79s.

They might cut out all those not on pension credit - 3.85m - and thus restrict the free licence to 900,000 households who would need to prove their eligibility.

They might even restrict it to households where everyone in it has to be over 75 and not just one member – to cut out 1.2m current beneficiaries.

To means test the licence fee they would have to access DWP private records to enable them to decide who got the means tested benefit or who did not - and that it would cost £72 millions simply to administer the system – money that could have gone direct to the pensioners, instead of money that is paid for in red tape including creating the new payment system contacting all the over 75 each year to seek payment and cost of handling compliance of non-payers.

But it seems the BBC would prefer to charge all 4.75m households that £150 a year each.

For their report and that of Frontier Economics is so complacent about what is once again rising pensioner poverty.

They have to admit however that pensioner income is 69 per cent of average household income.

They have to agree that one third of the over 73s are in the poorest 30 per cent of the population - and indeed that one in every four of the over 75s are eligible for pension credit because their incomes are so low.

And they do not tell us the real truth - that pensioner poverty is on the rise again.

The numbers of pensioners in poverty have risen from 1.6m three years ago to 1.9m now and will rise beyond 2m by 2022 – and the over 75s are almost 50% more likely to be in poverty than the 65-75s.

Abolishing the TV licence fee as the charge rises towards £160 and then £170 will make that poverty worse.

So just t at the time as poverty is rising the benefit is at risk of being taken away.

It is the height of arrogance for anyone to champion the case for the unelected BBC To have the power to make such a decision.

Indeed, it is a mistake to decide that this form of taxation should be imposed by anyone other than the Government.

Tom Watson the opposition Culture Spokesperson has taken up this case.

Age UK has published a petition I have signed and urge others to sign.

As they state, the decision about who pays what for their TV licence should come back to Parliament – and we should challenge the Conservatives to honour and not abandon their 2017 election manifesto promise.

I'm signing the petition. I hope you do too.

Here is the petition and how to sign it - CLICK HERE