[author's postal address removed] 24 June 2001 Tessa Jowell MP Secretary of State for Culture House of Commons London Dear Madam, TV LICENSING AND NON-TV HOUSEHOLDS I am writing to ask you to take action to stop TV Licensing, a wholly Government-funded body, from their intrusive and threatening approach to households who do not own TVs. I wrote to your predecessor on this matter but received a reply from an official saying he was too busy to respond. I consider it is unacceptable in a democracy for a Minister to refuse to answer a reasonable and thoughtful letter from a citizen, and so I hope you will reply. In particular, I consider that your predecessor came very close to misleading Parliament last year when he told an MP that if a constituent replied to a TV Licensing enquiry "that would be the end of the matter". That is not true. It would not be the end of the matter. TV Licensing have a policy of issuing reminders to households without TV licences every 6 months, asking them to sign a form to say they do not have a TV. If no reply is received, they threaten to send an enquiry officer to the address. Even if a reply is sent, they still send an Enquiry Officer to the address to "confirm" there is no TV. Many people who choose not to have a TV - some for ethical reasons - are thus repeatedly harassed by TV Licensing. This is an unacceptable intrusion. People who do not own cars do not get reminders from DVLA about why they don’t have a driving licence: people who do not own shotguns do not get visited by the police to ask why they don’t have a shotgun licence. Why should non-TV owners alone be harassed in this way ? It appears to me to be in breach of the right to privacy and family life guaranteed by the Human Rights Act. Although TV Licensing have refused in the past to tell me, even under Open Government, how many people they estimate do not own a TV, it is clearly several hundred thousand. Many of these feel the same way I do about TV Licensing’s tactics, and have written to the media to express this. I am confident that it would be possible to organise a concerted campaign against TV Licensing’s pernicious and bullying tactics, but I would like you to consider first what you can do. I have three constructive suggestions for you to consider. The first is that TV Licensing should be required to pay compensation to people who do not own TVs, if they write to them more often than a defined and reasonable frequency. At present, TV Licensing have no financial incentive to stop them issuing duplicate and inappropriately frequent reminders. This requirement would force them to balance their desire for licence fee maximisation with the interests of non-TV households. A similar fee would apply if TV Licensing insist on visiting the home of a non-TV household. Secondly, TV Licensing should be required to appoint to their board of management a representative of people who do not own TVs. This would ensure that this interest is taken into account more seriously than it is at present. Alternatively, a watchdog should be appointed to investigate complaints against TV Licensing. Thirdly, TV Licensing should be required to fund, research and publish in the public domain an analysis of alternative ways of securing TV licence income which do not involve inconvenience and threats to people who do not own TVs. One of my concerns about TV Licensing is that their accountability to Ministers is very thin - even though they are wholly publicly funded and carry out a quasi-executive function, the amount of Ministerial scrutiny to which they are subject appears negligible. In theory they are accountable to the BBC, who have an independent Board, but the BBC appear to exercise no policy influence upon them. In any event, the strategic responsibility is clearly one within your Department’s purview, and I would be grateful for a reasonable response to these constructive suggestions. Yours sincerely, Mark Valentine by e-mail