Cabinet ministers clash over BBC licence fee plans

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey has hinted that she clashed in a Cabinet meeting with Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries over plans to scrap the licence fee which funds the BBC.

Ms Dorries sparked fears over the future of the broadcaster last week when she tweeted that the current licence fee settlement, which runs up to 2027, “will be the last”.

The move was seen as part of “Operation Red Meat” - a broader push to shore up support in Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he faces the threat of a vote of no confidence from his own Conservative MPs over the partygate affair.

Two days after her original tweet, Ms Dorries appeared to backtrack, as she announced a two year freeze on the £159 a year licence fee but stopped short of scrapping the funding model. Instead she called for a debate on the long term future of the BBC.

Asked on LBC if she had been “unhappy” at Ms Dorries’s tweet about scrapping the licence fee, the Work and Pensions Secretary admitted she had “good discussions” about it at Cabinet.

“It’s fair to say Nadine reported what she did, we had good discussions at cabinet about it,” said Ms Coffey, who briefly worked for the BBC earlier in her career. Pushed on whether she had an “exchange of views”, she added: “Discussion normally involves an exchange of views.

“That doesn’t mean I am opposing Nadine in what she is considering. It’s important we work - and we are doing this across government – [on] the role of the BBC amongst all the other public service broadcasters and in the light of all the other new media that has come into people’s phones and other electrical devices and TVs as a way of enjoying that.

“It’s a very different dynamic to when the BBC was founded nearly 100 years ago and I am conscious Nadine is responsible for leading Government policy on this but it is good that we are having a discussion.”

On Wednesday the BBC’s Director General Tim Davie, who has warned the two year freeze will lead to a £285million funding gap by 2027, hit back at Ms Dorries, telling MPs: “I don’t think it’s for one person to decide the funding model of the BBC. We need to go through that properly. And I think the licence fee has proven itself to be very strong in what it delivers.”