BBC bias row shows why the £174.50 TV licence could be scrapped in 2027

A television licence will set you back £174.50 every year. But if that sounds like a lot of money, I have good news. You may not have to pay it after December 31 2027. That's when the BBC's current Royal Charter, which sets out what our national broadcaster is meant to be doing, comes to an end. And Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has made it clear that the TV licence could be changed, or scrapped entirely, after that date.

This week's events, which saw BBC director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness resign over bias in its news coverage, has made it even harder to justify charging the public a compulsory fee. But the TV licence was increasingly difficult to defend anyway. It made sense back in the days when there were only three or four television channels, and the telly was the only screen in the house. However, while some of us still remember the days before YouTube and Netflix, that era is ancient history to younger viewers.

Indeed, many younger people don't understand the appeal of watching a big screen in the living room at all. They prefer to watch videos on a personal screen, such as a phone or tablet.

By the way, the law currently says you don't even need to have a TV In your house to require a licence. Watching TV-style streaming content on any device counts.

Ms Nandy summed it up well when she told a Commons inquiry: "One of the challenges that we have, and it is a wider challenge around the licence fee, is that attitudes towards the licence fee have changed.

"Particularly for the younger generation, who now tend to consume a lot of their TV online through platforms like YouTube and others, they find it very difficult to understand why they pay a licence fee, because they see it as a subscription service to a service they do not use."

She didn't say that the licence fee would be scrapped, and suggested that the Government could instead set out to convince people it was still needed. While the fee largely pays for the BBC, it does help fund other things such as the infrastructure needed to provide Freeview services.

But she said the consultation would begin this year (although time is rapidly running out for her to keep that promise).

And Ian Murray, a Culture Minister in Ms Nandy's team, has confirmed: "The Government is keeping an open mind about the future of the licence fee."

Even Tim Davie admitted before he resigned that the current arrangements can't last forever, telling MPs in September: "We need stable and adequate funding. That includes the BBC in terms of what comes after the licence fee."

An argument used by defenders of the licence fee is that the BBC provides high quality, impartial news. This is so important, we're told, that everyone should be forced to pay for it.

The current controversy destroys that argument.

Panorama clearly doctored footage of a speech delivered by Donald Trump to make it look like he encouraged violence - when in that section of the speech he actually called on people to march "over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Mr Trump's critics will point to other sections of his speech when they claim he did encourage violence. Fine - they can make their argument. What the BBC did, however, was to edit a speech in a way that misled viewers.

And that's just part of it. The memo by BBC standards adviser Michael Prescott says executives ignored concerns about bias shown in coverage of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, and of the debate about whether people with male bodies should be excluded from some women's spaces such as changing rooms.

These are hugely difficult issues to report on. Feelings run very high. Even a small and unintentional error can lead to a deluge of complaints.

But the BBC did get it wrong and, worse than that, it didn't seem to care, instead adopting a defensive attitude and dismissing its critics.

Even today, defenders of the status quo are claiming that criticism of the BBC is some sort of right-wing plot.

If you want to pay for what the BBC offers, whether that's Eastenders, comedy shows or the news, then that's your prerogative.

However, there is no justification any more for forcing the rest of us to cough up, whether we like it or not.