He adds: “Tony Hall and Rona Fairhead [the Chairman of the BBC Trust] went to see George Osborne, who had largely taken over the negotiations from Whittingdale, in his office at the Treasury at 11am on Friday 3 July and found him suddenly to be in ‘a very constructive mood’. Significant ‘mitigations’ of the cost of the over-75s’ licence fees would be possible after all.