Other channels 'should share licence fee'

A slice of the licence fee should be given to commercial broadcasters to make children's programmes and regional news, according to MPs.

The Commons culture, media and sport committee said that with both types of programming under financial threat, funding should be raised through either general taxation or top-slicing of the licence fee.

And the committee suggested the BBC scale back some of its activities in areas where commercial operators are already active, such as cookery, property and game shows.

Its report, published on Thursday, proposed a new public service content authority to award public money to commercial channels.

The corporation should not "be left as the only supplier of public service content in any area", it said.

"We believe that public funding, using licence fee money or general taxation, should be made available to all broadcasters on a contestable basis, to sustain plurality and to bring the benefits of competition to the provision of public service content that the market might otherwise not provide, such as UK-produced children's programming or regional programming.

"However, we do not believe that the overall cost to the public should be allowed to increase."

The recommendations were not unanimously approved by the committee, with Labour's Alan Keen saying that sharing the licence fee "will be the beginning of the end for the BBC".

Chairman John Whittingdale added that he believed the corporation had been "too quick" to dismiss the option of scrapping some of its digital channels, such as BBC3 or BBC4.

"The case for the BBC having as many channels as it does at present has not yet been wholly justified," he said.