The government has responded to a petition on the Parliamentary website calling for free BBC TV licences for ALL older people.The government has responded to a petition on the Parliamentary website calling for free BBC TV licences for ALL older people.The government has responded to a petition on the Parliamentary website calling for free BBC TV licences for ALL older people.

State pensioners born before 1959 have been given a free BBC TV licence update from the Labour Party government. The government has responded to a petition on the Parliamentary website calling for free BBC TV licences for ALL older people.

The petition states: “Fund Free TV licences for all pensioners. We want the Government to fund free TV licences for existing pensioners and those who reach the official retirement age. When people reach retirement age, we think they should receive a state-financed free TV licence.

“Many pensioners live on the breadline with only the TV for company. With the cost of food soaring and utility bills ever higher, we feel there is a desperate need to provide all pensioners with at least this concession.

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“We feel it is a double outrage that those who have given their all to this country in taxes and raising children have to pay a TV licence fee and are only exempt if they receive means-tested Pension Credit. Meanwhile, some media figures draw huge salaries.”

After it racked up over 10,000 signatures backing it, the petition drew a response from the government.

Labour Party Cabinet member Lisa Nandy told BBC Breakfast the licence fee was “deeply regressive” and that she was thinking “quite radically and creatively” about alternatives.

However, they do not include using money from general taxes to fund the BBC, because that could open up the broadcaster to interference from politicians who would hold the purse strings, she said.

Nandy did not rule out a subscription model for the BBC, but said there was “a whole range” of other possible options.

She said the government was “determined to grip this, and I think there is a genuine sense out there in the public that the licence fee was built for a different era”.