Lord Redwood helped transform Britain by championing privatisation, and he has a bold vision for how the BBC can change and survive.
The BBC has shaped Britain for decades but faces unprecedented competition (Image: Getty)
The BBC should be transformed into a “mutual” so all licence fee-payers will hold a single share and get to choose the director general, according to Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation guru. Lord Redwood wants ordinary Britons who pay the licence fee to wield new influence over the services provided by the broadcaster.
In a further radical proposal, he says the commercial arm of the BBC should “raise substantial new capital on the UK stock market and put the money into new technology, talent and programmes”.
Lord Redwood, a champion of privatisation who served as director of the Number 10 policy unit, warned: “The UK media industry is losing out massively to the US as UK customers choose to spend their money on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney to get the programmes they want, whilst also having to pay the UK TV tax, the BBC licence fee.”
He is unimpressed that BBC Commercial delivered revenues of £2.2billion in 2025-25, returning £377million to the BBC.
“The UK can do much better than that if we change the management and model of this state broadcaster,” he said.
Television in the UK has been revolutionised with the arrival of subscription-based streaming services. In the first quarter of the year, Netflix was in 18.1million homes; Amazon Prime video was in 13.7million; Disney+ was in 7.8million; Discovery+ and Paramount+ were in 3.5million; and Apple TV was in 3.1million.
Lord Redwood said: “The US media majors have a combined turnover of 30 times that of the whole BBC.”
Netflix alone had revenue of $45.2billion last year, with more than 325million paid memberships.
Now-Lord Redwood appearing on the BBC (Image: PA)
Lord Redwood said the BBC “slumbered and grumbled as Netflix surged from nowhere”. In an article for the Institute of Economic Affairs, he warned that the broadcaster is seeing its “market share, purchasing clout, ability to attract talent and to win audiences badly squeezed by more fleet of foot and now much more powerful rivals”.
Proposing radical change, he told the Sunday Express: “The BBC should be a mutual with all licence fee-payers holding a single share, choosing the director general and influencing the services they want.”
His intervention comes as BBC’s mission and purpose and the way it operates is examined as part of the review of its Royal Charter.
A BBC spokesperson acknowledged the need for change, stating: “The current licence fee model can no longer support the BBC’s public service mission, and Charter Review must deliver radical reform to secure a funding model that is universal, fair, sustainable, and future-proof.”
According to its own analysis: “[The] number of households requiring a licence has fallen from around 96% in 2016-17 to 90% in 2024-25, while evasion has increased from around 5.3% to 12.5%. The total number of licences in force has fallen from 26.3million to 23.8million.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said: “The BBC must be funded by a model that is sustainable and fair to all those that are paying it. Through Charter Review, we are looking at a range of options, including how the BBC can operate more efficiently, generate more commercial revenue, and how the licence fee could be reformed. The Charter Review is also looking at a range of issues to make sure the BBC truly represents and delivers for every person in this country.”