BBC News and BBC World to merge

[Mr Q]

The government could take back funding for items that have been passed to the BBC over the years: All of the World Service, S4C, free TV licences for the over 75s etc.  It has added back some funding for the World Service both permanently and on ad-hoc basis for Ukraine coverage. 

Regardless of who is in power the Treasury is the Treasury so it's very unlikely to be willing to take on hundreds of millions of pounds of expenditure if it doesn't have to.

The sad reality is by the end of the 2027 licence fee settlement there will have been 17 years of deep cuts to the BBC.

I've said it before but Tony Hall should not have folded on free TV licences for the over 75s.  I would have used all means possible - both legal and PR - to stop the government from transferring what was a social policy on to the BBC.

The Treasury doesn't just resist spending for the sake of it. The natural inclination of the civil servants working there would be to critically evaluate different proposals: how do the benefits stack up versus the costs? Can the benefits be obtained at lower overall cost? But they do not have it as a mission to run around throwing proverbial stokes in wheels. At the end of the day, ministers (and parliament) make decisions. The civil service's role is to inform those decisions and then execute them once made.

As far as the BBC goes: politicians have made decisions about what level of funding a public service broadcaster needs in the 21st century. If voters don't like those decisions, they're welcome to elect a different group of politicians to make different decisions. But I suspect the appetite for increasing the licence fee or injecting additional taxpayers dollars into the BBC today is pretty low, and that most people have other issues that they consider priorities for government. Meanwhile, the BBC will continue to change and adapt -- both in response to funding decisions, and to changing consumer patterns in terms of the media environment.

This is not the 1950's. The media environment is more diverse, more competitive. The BBC doesn't need to be everywhere trying to do everything.