Science Minister Andrew Griffith has blasted the BBC licence fee and warns that it’s the next Horizon scandal in the making. The BBC shelled out a whopping £136 million last year for licence fee collection, and hired over 1,000 personnel as part of the fee enforcement brigade. Perhaps investing in staff who adhere to the impartiality rules would be a better use of that money…

Now the fee has been hiked to £169.50 a year, Griffith is arguing that the current funding model cannot continue, something Guido can agree on. Griffith attacks the fact that licence fee evasion cases are prosecuted by the BBC’s TV Licensing arm, pointing to a suggestion that they should instead use the Crown Prosecution Service to avoid a Post Office-like scandal, where the “little person” is mercilessly and unjustly prosecuted. Strong and wise words…

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At my Pulborough ‘In Conversation’ event last week, with emotions running high over the scandal of sub-Postmaster prosecutions, I was asked if I thought the like of it ‘could it ever happen again’?

Sad to say, I do believe that it is quite possible there are similar injustices happening right now.

An average of about 3,500 people every month are prosecuted behind closed doors for not paying the BBC licence fee, according to the most recent Ministry of Justice figures.

Last year the BBC spent £136 million collecting its licence fee with enforcement contracted to the private outsourcing company Capita. They employ an army of more than 1,000 people to enforce licence fee payment, including door-to-door enforcement officers and solicitors to prosecute cases.

Licence fee evasion cases are prosecuted by the BBC’s TV Licensing arm. Last week, Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, said they should instead be dealt with by the independent Crown Prosecution Service. He drew comparisons to the Horizon scandal, in which Post Office investigators gathered the evidence for their own prosecutions.  And the campaign group Silver Voices, which acts on issues particularly affecting the over-60s, said prosecuting evaders behind closed doors was “draconian”. “The ‘little person’ doesn’t have much of a say on what is happening to them. As the Post Office showed, injustices can occur.”