The licence fee was designed 86 years ago for a single radio service. Twenty-four years later a television fee was added and viewers and listeners were offered a simple choice: pay for each service or do without. The equity of this subscription system was then undermined by the introduction of ITV. At that point, the TV licence fee (the separate radio licence fee was eventually phased out as unduly expensive to collect) became a flat-rate equipment tax.

The notion of particular payments for particular services has survived, with a higher charge for colour than for black-and-white television.

Now that the BBC makes its programmes available on the internet, does this signal the end of the licence fee? Reports that TV Licensing is holding off prosecuting high-profile licence fee refuseniks (such as Noel Edmonds) and that the BBC Trust faces a multitude of complaints about the aggressive pursuit of less-famous nonpayers have added to the air of uncertainty about the future of the levy.

In fact, the BBC is wholly committed to it – as are all the main political parties – for the indefinite future. It emphasises that watching streamed BBC content on a computer does not excuse paying the fee, as what counts is live viewing. Nonlive viewing – for instance, using the BBC iPlayer – escapes the rule but the number of households that will dispose of their expensive televisions in order to watch TV on their computers to avoid the licence fee must be minuscule now, and not much larger in the foreseeable future.

Perhaps the most vulnerable aspect of the licence fee politically is the high cost of collection and evasion – nearly £300 million a year. Former BBC executives have urged that collection costs be cut or eliminated by funding the BBC directly from the Treasury or by including a BBC charge in the council tax.

One key advantage of such a move would be to shift the cost much more towards the better-off and drastically reduce the number of (mostly impoverished) nonpayers prosecuted each year: 150,000.

Returning to the voluntary subscription system with which the BBC started – as recommended by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s own advisory panel, chaired by Lord Burns in 2005 – has growing attraction, especially as the BBC’s own studies have shown that it would be financially viable.

David Elstein is chairman of DCD Media and a former chief executive of Five. He is also chairman of the Broadcasting Policy Group, which reported to the Conservative Party on the BBC’s future in February 2004.

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