The Intergenerational Foundation strongly believes that retaining TV Licence Fee concessions is unaffordable, and would have a deleterious impact on the scope and quality of the services which the BBC is able to provide to its audiences across the UK.

As both of the reports by Frontier Economics emphasise, retaining the full concession in its current form would immediately cut the BBC’s budget by 18%, and because the commitment to provide free TV licences to every single household containing at least one member over the age of 75 is completely open-ended, it would become an ever-increasing financial burden on the BBC as the UK’s population ages.

As is explained in the BBC’s consultation document, retaining the existing concession would also effectively produce a very large cross-subsidy between younger Licence Fee payers and their older counterparts, worth approximately £34 per year from each younger household (or roughly 22% of the current Licence Fee payment from each younger household would go towards subsidising free TV licences for the over-75s).