Now you’ll have to pay the licence fee, Watch the BBC iPlayer ?

A loophole that lets people watch catch-up TV on the BBC iPlayer without paying for the TV licence fee is to close soon, the Government said.

Culture secretary John Whittingdale said he wanted to stop viewers getting “a free ride”.

Currently you have to pay the licence fee only if you watch live TV, whether or not that’s on the iPlayer. It’s thought that around 1.5million people in around 700,000 households and businesses take advantage of this loophole to watch programmes without a licence fee.

It’s been estimated that this costs the BBC around £150m a year in lost revenue.

Following discussions with the BBC, Whittingdale announced plans to extend the £145.50 licence fee so it also covers programmes watched ‘on demand’, after they’ve been broadcast

Speaking to the Oxford Media Convention, Mr Whittingdale claimed that the current licence is out of date. He said: “When the licence fee was invented, video on demand did not exist”.

He said that it was “wrong” that people can watch BBC programmes for free “an hour, a day or a week after they are broadcast”. The change could come into force during this parliamentary session, which ends in July. The BBC said it was “happy to have reached an agreement” with the Government.

But it’s not clear how the BBC would force iPlayer viewers to pay the licence fee. One option would be for the corporation to ask viewers to log in using personal details, which it can check against their database of addresses to verify that the fee has been paid.