More than a million people who exploit a loophole to watch the BBC without a television licence will be forced to pay up within months under new laws.
Households watching programmes on iPlayer after they have aired on television do not currently have to pay the £145.50 fee — a situation that is forecast to cost the BBC £100 million a year.
The culture secretary announced yesterday that he would rush through legislation to close the loophole and make non-payment a criminal offence as early as the summer.
“The BBC works on the basis that all who watch it pay for it,” John Whittingdale told the Oxford Media Convention. “Giving a free ride to those who enjoy Sherlock or Bake Off an hour, a day or a week after they are broadcast was never intended and is wrong.”
Launched in 2007 the iPlayer pioneered online streaming for a mass audience but has become a bugbear for the corporation as growing numbers of households dodge the licence fee by watching programmes after they are first aired.
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The BBC said that the loophole would cost it £100 million a year in lost revenues by 2022, equivalent to nearly 700,000 households not paying the fee.
The corporation is considering how to enforce the new rules. Options include asking viewers to sign in to the iPlayer — perhaps with a unique user code — and monitoring whether households have a TV licence when they access the catch-up service.
The BBC said that it had not yet worked through the details of enforcement and that there were a number of “complex factors” to consider.
It was too early to say whether the new regime would allow members of one household to access the iPlayer in different locations, as in the case of students living away from the family home, it added.
The BBC is clear, however, that it will pursue those not paying the iPlayer licence fee with the same vigour as it does those who do not pay for live TV.
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Ministers including Michael Gove, the justice secretary, are keen to de-criminalise non-payment of the licence fee, which is clogging up the courts.
About 10 per cent of magistrates’ court work is taken up with these cases and any move to extend the licence fee could worsen the backlog. Only one in ten non-payment cases in England and Wales ends in a conviction, wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds in court time and public money. At present about 150,000 to 180,000 people a year are convicted.
However, last year the government was defeated in the House of Lords on the plans, when peers narrowly voted against decriminalising non-payment of the fee before 2017.
The BBC has also warned that decriminalisation could cost it up to £200 million a year and lead to the closure of channels because of the loss of income from its budget. The corporation, which asked the government to close the loophole as part of a deal to take on the £700 million bill for free TV licences for the over 75s, said it was “happy to have reached an agreement” on the issue. “Its swift closure will help give the BBC funding certainty,” a spokeswoman said.
The BBC clashed with Mr Whittingdale yesterday. Rona Fairhead, chairwoman of the BBC Trust, attacked him for suggesting that BBC One needed to be “more distinctive”, saying she “did not know what his evidence is”.
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“We have recent evidence about how it has improved. I don’t know what his evidence is. I know that when I look at the public consultation results, those are saying, 75 per cent are saying, it’s distinctive,” Ms Fairhead said.
Mr Whittingdale, citing a government-commissioned market impact assessment which took aim at the dumbing down of BBC One, said ensuring distinctiveness was one of his “core expectations” as he looks to charter renewal. “Whether or not Strictly Come Dancing, or The Great British Bake Off or any of these other programmes are too far removed from that or are absolutely distinctive, that is a judgment for whoever it is who has the task of assessing the BBC performance,” he said.