Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with refence to David Perry QC's TV Licence Fee Enforcement Review, published 2015, what steps his Department took to implement the recommendation that gender disparity in TV licence prosecutions be the subject of investigation and consideration in the BBC Charter Review.

In the White Paper ‘A BBC for the future: a broadcaster of distinction’ published in 2016, the government considered the findings of the Perry Review and agreed with its assessment that the current regime represents a broadly fair and proportionate response to the problem of licence fee evasion and provides good value for money (both for licence fee payers and taxpayers).

The White Paper set out that, as part of the Charter Review process, the government saw evidence from the BBC that it was looking to address the recommendations from the Perry Review, including further work on gender disparity.

TV Licensing subsequently completed a review of the gender disparity in TV licence evasion prosecutions and published a Gender Disparity Report in 2017. The report explored some of the reasons why a gender imbalance exists but noted that there is no evidence of any discriminatory enforcement practices on the part of TV Licensing.