Britain's civic breakdown? SA got there first — 85% TV licence evasion rate and R467bn unpaid municipal bills

In the article republished below, The Economist frets that 11.9% of Britons now dodge their TV licence, and treats it as a symptom of a crumbling social contract. Try South Africa for scale. The SABC's own numbers show an 85% non-payment rate on TV licences, costing the broadcaster R4.18bn last year alone. Add municipal electricity debt: consumers owe councils a jaw-dropping R467bn, with Cogta itself blaming a "culture of non-payment" rather than incompetence. If Britain is drifting from civic duty, we left port long ago. This piece is a useful mirror — read it, then ask what happens when trust in the state collapses entirely..From The Economist, published under licence. The original article can be found on www.economist.com© 2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved..The Economist.Who would buy a television licence? In Britain, fewer do. Subscriptions for the £180 ($245) annual levy, required to watch broadcasters and the BBC’s iPlayer, fell to 23.2m in 2025, the eighth straight year of decline. The dearth is caused partly by viewers moving to platforms such as Netflix. But outright evasion is growing.For who today feels much deference towards a broadcaster that often tumbles into scandal? The estimated evasion rate has risen from 5.2% in 2010 to 11.9% today. Around half of those registering as not needing a licence do so incorrectly, the bbc reckons. These days, shrugs a corporation boss, people simply do not answer the door to licence-fee enforcers.Britons are shunning obligations that used to be deemed civic duties (see chart 1). Rates of non-compliance have grown across everyday responsibilities, such as paying local taxes, responding to official surveys and sending children to school. Similar trends can be seen across Europe and America..Individually the opt-outs might appear unrelated or trivial. They have diverse causes, from squeezed budgets to online misinformation. But overlay them and the pattern is striking. Something seems to have slipped in the relationship between the state and society. As compliance falls, the state becomes less effective, leaving the public still more cynical.Andy Burnham and his colleagues fret about the trends. When the prime minister laments “neoliberalism”, he is talking as much about runaway individualism as economics, explains one figure in his circle. The Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), a think-tank close to the government, advocates “reciprocism”: it favours measures such as mandatory voting to rebuild a sense of civic obligation.Three culprits seem to be afoot. One is a long-term collapse in trust and deference. In 1986, 38% of people said they usually trusted the government to put the national interest first (see chart 2). Today just 9% say they do, according to the British Social Attitudes survey. The share declaring corruption endemic in the civil service rose by 16 percentage points from 2014 to 2023, while those saying obeying laws and rules is “very important” fell by six points, reports the International Social Survey Programme, a study. The World Values Survey finds that the share saying it would be good to have “greater respect for authority” fell from 74% to 56% between 1981 and 2022.Second, a mix of high taxes and poor services has sapped faith in government. “People are withdrawing from the state, because the state hasn’t been delivering for them,” says Harry Quilter-Pinner of ippr. Demand for alternatives like private health care is growing. The third culprit is the covid-19 pandemic, which broke many habits of compliance.Britain is not a hotbed of bearded libertarians living off-grid in the woods. People dislike tax avoidance and benefit fraud more than in many other rich economies. But even a modest fall in compliance can be costly. Take council tax, which raised £47bn (1.6% of gdp) last year. It was collected in England at a rate above 97% through the 2010s. During the worst of the covid-19 pandemic, councils stopped enforcing debts. The collection rate never recovered, falling to 95.6% last year. Arrears have risen to £7.4bn..Weaker enforcement also helps to explain a dramatic rise in unpaid energy bills, now totalling £6bn. Many families are struggling financially. But energy debts do not accrue interest and suppliers seldom disconnect homes. As a result, people who can afford to settle their debts are “free-riding” on rules meant to protect the vulnerable, claims Energy uk, an industry lobby group. tv licensing is more weakly enforced, too. The public no longer believes in the “detector vans” once said to prowl the streets, and the bbc is reluctant to see debtors jailed.Covid caused a “fundamental breakdown” in the relationship between schools and parents, concluded a report by Public First, a consultancy. After experiencing mandatory lockdowns, many parents concluded that education is simply optional. Persistent absenteeism (pupils missing 10% of school or more) hit 23% in 2022, more than twice the pre-covid average.Britain’s vaccine drive was remarkably popular, yet it also drove a wave of online vaccine scepticism. The six-in-one jab, which covers horrors including polio, is an example. The share of two-year-olds covered exceeded the World Health Organisation’s 95% target every year from 2010 to 2018. It has not been hit since, falling to 92.5% last year. In Hackney, a London borough, it collapsed to 66%. Other essential health checks are failing too: the share of women undergoing cervical and breast-cancer screening has also fallen, in common with other advanced economies.Some changes can make cities feel disorderly. Fare evasion on the London Underground shot up during the pandemic and now stands at 3.5%. Transport for London wants to cut the rate to 1.5% by 2030. But commuters have grown tolerant of barrier-jumpers. The share of Britons declaring fare evasion “never justifiable” has fallen by 15 points since 1981.In Britain, as elsewhere, response rates to official jobs surveys have declined, leaving monetary policymakers flying blind. In 1977 Britain’s Labour Force Survey had a response rate of 70%. It reached a nadir of 13% in 2023 and now stands at 23%. One reason is that landlines have given way to mobile phones. But falling institutional trust is part of the problem. Sir Ian Diamond, formerly head of the Office for National Statistics, spoke of “very high levels of flat refusals” compared with the period before the pandemic.Changes in the media landscape may not be helping. Consider the hosepipe bans in force across much of England after droughts this summer, which rely on voluntary compliance. In the 1970s the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper for people with large gardens, provided stern advice on how to manage without. This summer it ran columns with headlines such as: “I’m defying the hosepipe ban until my water company sorts themselves out”..Read more:.SABC pushes for universal media levy as TV licence model fails.Lower tax revenue, unreliable statistics and a sicker population make all governments less effective. There is no point spending billions on school curriculums or vaccine drives if people do not turn up. Yet weakening compliance presents a particular problem for the left, which conceives of the state as a collectivist project. “The effect is asymmetrical: it undermines some of the core propositions of the progressive side of politics,” says Mr Quilter-Pinner. Mr Burnham promises a bigger state. Many Britons are opting out of it altogether. .Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. 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Britain's civic breakdown? SA got there first — 85% TV licence evasion rate and R467bn unpaid municipal bills

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