Boris Johnson says he is looking at abolishing the TV licence

Boris Johnson has said he is ‘certainly looking at’ getting rid of all TV licences.

While speaking in the north east of England today, the prime minister was asked whether a Tory government would abolish TV licence fees for everybody.

Mr Johnson said that ‘as this late stage in the campaign’ he would not be willing to make an ‘unfunded spending commitment like that’.

But, he told a crowd at Fergusons Transport factory in Washington, Sunderland, that the BBC ‘should cough up and pay for the licences for the over-75s as they promised to do’.

The PM added: ‘At this stage we are not planning to get rid of all TV licence fees, though I am certainly looking at it.

‘You have to ask yourself whether that kind of approach to funding a TV, a media organisation still makes sense in the long-term given the way other organisations manage to fund themselves – that’s all I will say.

‘I think that the system of funding by what is effectively a general tax, isn’t it, everybody has a TV, it bears reflection – let me put it that way.

‘How long can you justify a system whereby everybody who has a TV has to pay to fund a particular set of TV and radio channels – that is the question.’

In November, both the Tories and Labour pledged to keep free TV licences for over-75s if they win the 12 December general election.

The BBC has said from 2020 only those on pension credit will qualify, after it was made responsible for funding them under the charter agreement.

Shadow culture secretary Tom Watson said the removal of the benefit was ‘utterly callous’.

While Mr Johnson ordered officials to find a way to ensure no over 75s would need to pay as a ‘priority’.

Today, Mr Watson called the PM’s statement a ‘pathetic attempt’ to distract from an incident in which he refused to look at a picture of a four-year-old boy forced to sleep on the floor of a hospital.

Mr Johnson came under fire for taking a reporter’s phone and putting it in his own pocket instead of looking at the picture of Jack Williment-Barr at Leeds General Infirmary.

Mr Watson said: ‘His comments today reveal that he will threaten the very existence of another of Britain’s great institutions, the BBC, by scrapping its funding mechanism.

‘This is on top of the cruel decision to strip over-75s of their free TV licences.’

The BBC and the government came under fierce criticism over the move to scrap free licences to all people aged over 75, which was announced in June.

The decision came after the government made the BBC shoulder the cost of the benefit as part of its funding settlement.

The corporation said retaining the benefit for all over-75s would have cost £745 million – a fifth of the BBC’s budget – by 2021-22 and led to ‘unprecedented closures’.

BBC Two, BBC Four, the BBC News Channel, the BBC Scotland channel, Radio 5live, and a number of local radio stations could all be put at risk, the BBC said.

In October, the House of Commons media select committee said the decision to scrap the licence fees for just some over-75s was ‘an absurd situation’.