THE BBC licence fee is about to go up by £4 to £116, and there has been remarkably little fuss. The reason is plain: it always goes up. Since 2000 its rise has been governed by a simple formula: the rate of inflation plus 1.5 per cent.

While anyone can complain about the quality of individual BBC programmes, there is little doubt that British society as a whole benefits hugely from the licence. The range and diversity of programmes is demonstrably greater than that produced by wholly commercial systems.

But there is a darker side to the licence fee. It falls heavily and disproportionately on the poor. Every year more than 450,000 people face prosecution for non-payment — and 147,000 receive a court summons. In a typical year, 24 people go to jail for non-payment of fines.

It is time the Government had a serious look at poverty and the licence fee. After all, it is the Government’s generosity to the BBC to help it to pay for “the digital revolution” that is making the problem worse. As a result, the poorest are, in effect, subsidising new digital services for the better off.

The Government has already created a precedent by paying for 3.96 million free television licences for the over-75s. This costs more than £400 million a year. Help should now be extended to the 3.8 million people who receive income support, some of whom receive less than £55 a week in benefit and find the £116 fee to watch TV a daunting burden.

But what can be done? Giving a free licence to everyone on income support would cost £459 million. How about taking a pragmatic approach and offering a half-price licence fee to the poor? This would cost £229.5 million — the same amount that it costs to run one NHS hospital for a year.

It would be better if the Treasury were to pay, as it already does for the over-75s; alternatively, the money could come out of BBC savings.

Despite the best efforts of Greg Dyke, the Director-General of the BBC, there are those who believe that the corporation could cut the cost of its bureaucracy still further. If those savings were insufficient, few people would notice if the future budgets of some of the BBC’s digital channels received a short back and sides.

The fairer the licence fee, the longer it will survive as one of the main financial engines of a unique broadcasting culture.