Former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman has said the TV licence fee “clearly can’t last” but said there was no alternative funding model for the BBC at present.

Paxman said the £145.50 fee was unsustainable in the long term but said people had to ask themselves “would the world be a better place without the BBC?”

The presenter, who left the BBC2 programme last year, said pollsters should be “strung up by their feet from every lamppost in Whitehall” for getting their general election result wrong.

He said the media became consumed by their predictions because it was a “monumentally dull” campaign, of which he thought Ed Miliband performed marginally better than David Cameron.

Paxman, 65, also said – presumably tongue in cheek – that the over-70s, or over-75s, should be banned from voting in the election because it distorted the results.

“The whole process is distorted because politicians know that old people vote and they appeal to them. We don’t allow children to vote because they are feeble minded and a burden on the state. They could apply that elsewhere.”

Paxman also predicted that Scotland would leave the UK, a prospect he described as “neither depressing nor unlikely”.

Asked about the future of the TV licence at a Royal Television Society lunch in London on Tuesday, Paxman said: “It clearly can’t last.

“As platforms become interchangeable, as computers and televisions become indistinguishable, a tax on the ownership of a particular piece of technology becomes very, very hard to justify, I would say almost impossible.”

With the future funding and shape of the BBC up for grabs as part of the renewal of its royal charter by the end of 2016, Paxman added: “I can’t see an alternative at present. I don’t have an alternative to the licence fee.”

He said the newly appointed culture secretary John Whittingdale “may be terribly good for the BBC. In fairness, I don’t know. I’m a journalist, not a clairvoyant.”

Election interviews ‘quite fun’



Paxman accused broadcasters of behaving “ludicrously” in the long negotiations over the leaders’ debates, which began with proposals for three separate clashes only to end up with just one in which David Cameron took part after objections from the Tory party leader.

Paxman ended up interviewing both Miliband and Cameron in a joint Channel 4/Sky News broadcast, but they appeared separately.

“I think the broadcasters behaved ludicrously about the debates,” he said. “There is no constitutional entitlement to debates. They were trying to do what they saw as a public service but to suggest that somehow this was something that has to happen at every election was preposterous and untrue.

“I believe in accountability of course I want to see people having their feet held to the fire during an election campaign so voters can make up their minds, but let’s not pretend that somehow it is enshrined in magna carta or the bill of rights. It’s not.”

He said his interviews with Cameron and Miliband “went OK. It was quite fun. Hell, yes.”

Asked about the end of his interview with Miliband, when he was picked up by a microphone asking if the Labour leader was okay, Paxman said: “I always ask people if they are OK at the end of interviews. I even asked Michael Howard after that notorious interview. Nobody [ever asks me], the sods.”

‘Monumentally dull’ campaign

Of the election opinion polls which consistently predicted the election result was too close to call, Paxman said: “You are an idiot if you believe opinion polls. There are far too many young men who rarely see daylight making adjustments to the findings.

“It was clear from the start and should have been clear to anyone with two grey cells after the experience of the Scottish referendum, when many polls said it was too close to call, that polls were not to be taken as oracles of fact or trust.

“No doubt by the time the next election comes we will not have strung them up by their feet from every lamppost in Whitehall, which we should do.”

Paxman said broadcasters had devoted so much attention to opinion polls because it was a “monumentally dull” campaign.

“There wasn’t very much to talk about. I would say Miliband had a slightly better campaign than Cameron, he got about more. But Cameron in the early stages gave people no reason to think there was any point in voting Conservative.”

He said he did not miss being on the BBC on election night, having been part of Channel 4’s alternative election night with David Mitchell, and revealed that C4 “skillfully avoided paying for the exit poll” which skewered previous polls by predicting the Tories would be the largest party by some margin.

“It left us in a very interesting position of trying to get it on screen as soon as possible having seen it elsewhere,” he said of the poll.

“We got it on air pretty quick, I can tell you, and we didn’t say we didn’t pay for it. It was pretty cheap, yes. I think we were asked to share the cost.”

Of Channel 4’s coverage, he added: “Nothing much happens between the exit poll and getting on for 2am, we had comedy which I enjoyed very much. I enjoyed it once there as a story moving. I thought we certainly seemed to talk to a lot of people and go to a lot of counts.”

But he said the “old vehicle” of first past the post “was no longer roadworthy” in the multiparty era. “I would welcome some fresh thought about how we go about reforming all of that.”

On Scotland, he said: “I think the union’s over. All political entities are a creation of their time. That slogan, better together. Better together for what? I don’t find the prospect of separation either depressing or unlikely.”