Defund the BBC

Our aim is simple – we want to decriminalise non-payment of the TV licence fee and reduce the BBC Charter‘s scope to cover BBC content only.

We believe that this is not only in the people’s interests – finally, they will be free to enjoy the television they wish, without the threat of criminalisation – but the BBC’s interests too.

We intend to build our movement in a constructive way, making the inarguable, modern case for moving on from the current Licence Fee, while informing people how they can legally cancel their Licence.

Change won’t happen unless it has to. It’s time to Defund the BBC.

Our aims:

1. The BBC have made the licence fee rules deliberately unclear, in order to keep people coughing up. That is not right. We will develop and distribute guidance material to raise awareness and deliver clarity on the legal implications of cancelling your TV licence now, so that you can do so without worry.

2. The BBC’s system for catching and prosecuting non-licence fee payment is discriminatory, and disproportionately affects women and the poor due to a deliberate lack of clarity around the right to refuse entry. This has to stop. We will lobby the government to decriminalise the licence fee by the end of 2020.

3. It is not reasonable for people to be forced, by fear of imprisonment, to pay a licence fee in order to watch (or record) non-BBC live TV. We will work towards bringing about the necessary change to the BBC charter, by lobbying our representatives in Westminster and keeping up the pressure with an ongoing media campaign. Your views have gone unheard for too long. We want to change that.

With £60k we will be able to run the campaign until the end of 2020 and take the message from online into the real world, despite the traditional media black-out.

With £400k the campaign will be able to continue right up until the BBC Charter mid-term review in 2022, keeping pressure on the government to decriminalise and reduce the Charter’s scope so that people aren’t forced to pay for TV they don’t want to watch.


The organiser of this campaign is Defund The BBC Ltd (company registration number: 12694681). Please visit www.defundbbc.uk for more details.