FactCheck: Tories and TV licences

By Channel 4 News

Updated on 29 June 2009

Labour leaflets claim the Tories would scrap free TV licences for pensioners. "Rubbish," says David Cameron. Who's right?

The claim

"David Cameron and George Osborne would cut this year's £60 cash boost for Norwich pensioners while threatening to do away with free TV licences and free bus passes for the elderly. Pensioners across Norwich now know that their entitlements are in the queue for Tory cuts."
Labour Party leaflet, Norwich

The background

This morning in his monthly press conference, David Cameron railed against claims made in Labour's leaflets in Norwich, turf of an upcoming by-election.

Specifically, he singled out the suggestion the Tories would scrap free TV licences for the elderly.

"Their leaflets allege the Conservatives will get rid of TV licences for pensioners," he said. "It is just complete and utter rubbish and they know it is rubbish."

What is Labour actually claiming? Under the headline "Norwich pensioners could lose out under the Tories", the Labour leaflet says free TV licences (currently available to the over-75s) and free bus passes (for the over-60s) are under threat.

"Tory frontbencher Ken Clarke has confirmed that the Conservatives are looking at scrapping free TV licences and off-peak travel for pensioners," the leaflet claims (see a large version here, complete with picture of an unhappy-looking pensioner, on the Norfolk Blogger website.)

So what prompted Labour's claims; and do they hold water?

The analysis

It's no secret that the Tories want to keep a right rein on public spending - they repeatedly say that, under Labour, borrowing has got out of control and the cupboard is bare.

In his conference speech last autumn, Cameron asked all his shadow ministers to review every spending programme again to see if it were really necessary; two months ago, at the party's Spring Forum, he said they had "no option but to weed out spending that is not essential".

However, apart from a few isolated promises, such as increasing health spending and scrapping the ID card scheme, the party has refused to set out a "shadow budget" showing where the slicer would fall, leaving the majority of their plans open to speculation.

Labour cites one Conservative quote on threatened TV licences. On 3 May, Andrew Marr asked Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke asked about the "so-called middle class welfare state".

"David Davis has focused quite a lot on you know what well-off pensioners get in terms of TV licences and free public transport and so on," said Marr. "I mean surely at least some of those basic principles ought to be up for discussion?"

Clarke replied: "Well at this stage what I would say is they ought to be looked at, but they're not up for discussion and wild debate and then some decision."

The Conservatives, however, said today they had no plans to scrap free TV licences for pensioners. A shadow Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson told FactCheck that the issue was not under review.

The verdict

The Tories are examining public spending programmes in general, but the only evidence that pensioner's TV licences could face the axe is a fairly non-committal quote from Ken Clarke.

Labour says "it is clear that entitlements for pensioners are under threat until the Conservatives drop their position", but the Conservatives today told us that the free TV licences were just not under threat.

Perhaps time will prove us wrong, but right now there seems little evidence to back up the claims in the Labour leaflet.

FactCheck rating: 4.5

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Every time a FactCheck article is published we'll give it a rating from zero to five.

The lower end of the scale indicates that the claim in question largerly checks out, while the upper end of the scale suggests misrepresentation, exaggeration, a massaging of statistics and/or language.

In the unlikely event that we award a 5 out of 5, our factcheckers have concluded that the claim under examination has absolutely no basis in fact.

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