Responding to the Government's White Paper on BBC Charter Review published today, Jonathan Isaby, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:
“It is regrettable that the Government has ducked the opportunity for substantial reform of the regressive and arcane TV licence fee. It remains a throwback to an era when there was a single TV channel and the only way to watch it was via an unwieldy box in your living room. With the technology now in place for people to subscribe to their choice of thousands of competing channels and watch them wherever they happen to be, the time has surely come to explore a new, fairer funding model fit for the 21st century.”
On the announcement regarding publication of salaries within the BBC, he continued:
"Licence fee payers deserve to know how their money is being spent and so only revealing the salaries of those earning more than an eye-watering £450,000 just doesn’t cut the mustard. Other public bodies are rightly obliged to reveal far greater detail about all those on six-figure salaries and the Government has offered no justification for allowing the BBC to escape that scrutiny. By failing to promote proper transparency in this area, ministers are letting down all of us who are forced to stump up the cash to fund these pay deals."