MP slams the “Arthur Daley government”

MP Helen Jones slammed the “not me, guv government” when the Petitions Select Committee debated the BBC in Westminster Hall.
Discussing the decision to end free TV licences for over-75s not on pension credit, she said: “The real villain of the piece is not the BBC but the government.”
The Warrington North MP dubbed the government as “the Arthur Daleys of public administration.”
Ms Jones, who chairs the committee, said in 2017 the government had fought an election on a promise to maintain free TV licences for the duration of Parliament, knowing full well that in 2015 they had entered into an agreement with the BBC that made this impossible.
The decision to end the free licences had been met with almost universal condemnation.
The MP said for many older people, TV was a real companion.
She knew of one elderly person who kept the TV on all the time because it was another “voice in the house.”
One reason not to tie the TV licence to pension credit was that there was only a 63 per cent uptake.
This meant a lot of money went unclaimed, including £4 million in her own constituency and £3.5 billion nationally.
Ms Jones said people at a recent public consultation at the Orford Hub in Warrington, people had told her many older people had more expenses than younger people. Their heating bills were bigger and many paid for social care. One lady whose husband was in a nursing home was seeing her savings disappear.
She added: “Do we really want to live in the kind of country where pensioners go without food to pay for a TV licence, or go to jail for not having one?
“It is not the BBC but the government who are reneging on their promises to the electorate, which were made as recently as 2017 – it is as simple as that.”