WARRINGTON South MP Andy Carter discusses two items very much in the news at the moment in his latest column

TWO topics feature prominently in my mailbox over the last few weeks, what should we do with the BBC Licence fee and how we tackle inequalities from a section of society that is perhaps not always considered by politicians in Westminster.

Love it or hate it, the BBC is a British institution and most people of a certain age were brought up on a healthy diet of wholesome BBC kids TV.

We’ve reached a position where the Reithian principles of Educate, Entertain and Inform are again being debated and of more importantly how we pay for the swathes of content on TV, radio and online that the beavering producers at Broadcasting House or Media City create. Should everyone who wants to watch live TV still be compelled to buy a TV licence and if you don’t buy one, should you be at risk of a criminal record and a prison sentence?

Warrington Guardian: The BBC licence fee is again up for debate

The consultation is inviting everyone to have a say in the future of the BBC, because if we decide to change the way we fund a service which is ‘universal’ it will have an impact on what the nation’s public service broadcaster can afford to do, meaning some loved services, channels or programmes may disappear or be provided by someone else in the commercial sector.

42p per day is the current cost of a colour licence, less than the cost of most daily newspapers but many feel uncomfortable about the licence fee being used to fund eyewatering salaries of former footballers when the over 75s are being asked to pay.

Decriminalisation would of course mean that if you decided not to pay for a TV licence you could still be taken to a civil court if you used the service and didn’t pay – maybe there’s a new model for a subscription service – you can only access if you have a password or a pin – although that doesn’t work for radio.

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Earlier this month, I attended a really fascinating debate in the House of Commons about white boys from disadvantaged backgrounds and how modern society is ignoring their plight.. The statistics show they’re underperforming against all races and ethnicities of other boys but for many reasons we’re not discussing why this group are falling behind.

By the age of five, they are 13 per cent behind disadvantaged black boys and 23 per cent behind disadvantaged Asian girls in phonics, and they are 40 per cent less likely to go into higher education than their black counterpart. It’s not a subject that has been regularly discussed in Westminster.

Boris Johnson’s levelling up agenda is designed to address this in part, but we also need to think about updating what’s taught in our schools and colleges, making lessons directly relevant to the 21st century world of work these kids are going to inherit.

Schools like UTC in Warrington seem to me to be more relevant than ever in addressing some of these issues.