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The Select Committee discovered that 40 per cent. of people in Northern Ireland never pay for television licences. They call the licence fee an English tax, and stick two fingers up at the men in the detector vans. The men in the vans are terrified to do anything about it, and avoid certain parts of Belfast because of the problems that there have been in the past. The Committee found that, in the east end of London, 15 per cent. of licence fees had not been collected: owing to the rapid turnover of bedsitters, with six people living in a house divided into six rooms, no one knew who owned the television set. As the authorities did not know who should be prosecuted, they simply walked away.
Representatives of the magistrates courts begged the Committee on bended knees to do something about the problem. They were fed up with sending people--mainly women--to gaol. Last year, nearly 800 people were imprisoned for non-payment of licence fees. The magistrates told us that they were not people who would not pay, but people who could not. They did not have the £84. They were single parents, faced with the choice between having their electricity cut off and not paying their television licence fee.
People do not go to gaol if they do not pay their water, gas or electricity bills; they are disconnected. But if they cannot pay for their television licences, and cannot pay
the fine, they go to gaol. The magistrates, the Lord Chief Justice and other members of the legal profession have protested about that. People who do not pay may be imprisoned for only seven days, but, if a single mother with three kids goes to gaol for seven days, it costs the local council £2,000 to look after those children.
The people at the licensing unit receive bonuses related to the amount they collect. That is why women, kids and pensioners are roped in. They do not visit homes at night, when it is dark; they visit them during the day, when it is mainly unemployed people, pensioners and one-parent families who are sitting at home. They are continually chasing revenue with which to enhance their bonuses. They do not bother about the Savoy hotel; no legislation has been introduced to deal with it. This is simply vindictive revenue gathering, in the knowledge that people must pay or go to gaol.
That is what is wrong with the legislation: it hits the people who cannot afford to pay, rather than catching the people in the big hotels who can. I hope that the Minister will reconsider, and withdraw the measure. If he does so, he will be a very popular man.
Mr. Kevin Hughes (Doncaster, North):
I support new clause 18. Let me draw the Minister's attention to my early-day motion 972, which seeks to persuade the Government to do something very similar.
It is always useful for Opposition Members to be able to blame the Government for just about everything. The BBC asked for the new interpretation. If it had not, there would be no change, because the interpretation used to be that, if there was a licence for the main home, there was no need for another one. That is sensible, because no one can simultaneously watch television in his home and in his caravan or holiday home.
The BBC sought an interpretation, and presumably it got the answer it wanted, which will cost some people a great deal of money. But the interpretation is ludicrous, because, as I have said, people cannot watch two television sets at the same time. I accept that, if part of a family is watching television at home while the other family members are watching another set, they should be required to buy two licences, but it is not fair to ask people to pay twice for one service, and I can think of no other area in which that happens.
Many thousands of people--including many of my constituents and those of other hon. Members--enjoy their caravans and holiday chalets over the summer, and should not be penalised by having to pay twice for one service. I urge the Minister to accept the sentiments of the early-day motion and the new clause. He should revisit the situation and come up with a reinterpretation, so that people are not penalised in this way.
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby):
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) for putting such good points. The provision has given rise to massive grievance; many hon. Members are getting representations about it from people with caravans, chalets or other such accommodation.
The BBC has been forced into the situation by the licensing system. The licence fee is not increased by as much as it should be or by the rate that BBC costs are
increasing, so the BBC is forced to extract the maximum revenue from it, and that leads to bullying. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw said, people dare not use such bullying in Northern Ireland, where there is massive unpaid revenue. The process is exercised against the poor, the vulnerable, the old, and those who happen to be at home when the detector van calls.
I, too, went to see Grimsby magistrates about the sending of people, especially women, to prison. The magistrates do not want to do it: it is a question of unpaid fees. The problem seems to arise because, when the detector vans call, it is often the woman who is at home watching television, while the man may be down at the pub boozing away the licence fee. Therefore, it is the woman who is charged. It is monstrous that, in effect, the BBC has opened a massive grievance to extract its revenue. We should do something about that.
Our new clause is modest--it is a moderate clause from a moderate party--and covers only caravans that are used for holiday accommodation and are not let. It should also cover chalets and other such accommodation, which I do not know how to describe. There is exotic architecture along the sea front, especially in my area. It is "Costa del Caravan" there.
In the summer, some people who live in Grimsby migrate two or three miles down the coast to get the better weather in Cleethorpes. They live in caravans or chalets, and they take the television set with them. They do not leave it at home, where it and the video could be stolen. It is not a question of watching one service: there is only one set, and it has to be portable--if it were not, it might be stolen.
Those people naturally feel a grievance. They are told that they must have two licences, but that they can claim a rebate in each place for the part of the year that they are not in that place. The rebate, however, is not enough to reduce the charge to a fair level, so that is not a satisfactory solution. Our new clause is a sensible way of approaching the matter.
I also support the proposals in new clause 42, which deals with another long-standing grievance. The matter has been argued over so much. It causes much bitterness that one set of pensioners can get the reduced licence fee and another set cannot. I am amazed that, after all this time, the Government have still done nothing about that grievance, which has been festering. Indeed, they have allowed the BBC to add the other grievance about caravans and chalets, which is dealt with in our new clause. I strongly support both new clauses.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey):
I want to concentrate mainly on new clause 42. Since my election, the grievance about who has the concessionary television licence and who cannot qualify for it has been the one most affecting the elderly population in Wallasey, and the one about which they often write to me. One of the difficulties is its perceived unfairness, which new clause 42 seeks to deal with. It is about time that the Government considered what can be done about it.
The inconsistency infuriates people. They often live next door to someone in the same circumstances and in sheltered accommodation of the same size. There is no difference, apart from the time when an individual moved in and qualified for the concessionary licence, but there is a large difference in the two payments that those
neighbours must make. The licence fee is £89.50, which is a significant sum for some of our pensioners on low fixed incomes to have to come up with every year.
We know that many elderly people rely on television for their entertainment. If they are on a low income, they have few other pleasures. I therefore hope that the Government will take both the new clauses seriously. I know that it is a tangled problem, particularly in relation to sheltered accommodation, but I would be interested if the Government could come up with a way of solving some of the anomalies, and of at least helping neighbours to get on better with each other instead of rowing about one paying the £5 concessionary fee while the other must come up with nearly £100 for the same entertainment and service.
The problem exists for many of our constituents, and I look forward to hearing what ingenious ways the Government have come up with for dealing with the problem, which has persisted for too long.
The Minister of State, Department of National Heritage (Mr. Iain Sproat):
May I address myself to the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) first? She has explained the purpose of her new clause. In responding, I shall refer to the "warden requirement" as a convenient shorthand for the term in the qualifying criteria for the concessionary television licence scheme:
"a person whose function is to care for the needs of (the residents)".
As we understand it, the new clause's intention is to relax the warden requirement in the regulations, so as to bring within the concessionary scheme sheltered accommodation with visiting warden services. I say to the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) that I take the matter extremely seriously. She and the hon. Member for Moray will know what we have done in Committee.
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