The BBC would be weakened by slicing licence say regulators

Opposition to the recommendations by the Digital Britain report for the roll-out of national broadband and other projects to be funded by the “top-slicing” of the BBC licence fee has once again been reiterated by Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust.

The obligation on broadband service providers to provide a minimum connection speed of 2Mbps or higher to every home in the UK, which means that providers would need to cover the 10 percent of users that currently remain without these speeds, were called for in June by the Digital Britain report.

A combination of private-partner contributions, commercial contracts, mobile spectrum rollout, upgraded consumers themselves and regional public sector beneficiaries along with the underspend in the BBC Digital Switchover Help Scheme after 2012 would all make up the £200 million required for the broadband upgrade.

License fee payers were written an open letter recently by Lyons following increased criticism from James Murdoch and others in the industry regarding the BBC’s scale and the recent recommendation by Digital Britain. The letter stated that recent research results “reinforce our concern about any attempt to use the licence fee to subsidise commercial operators, as proposed by the government in its Digital Britain report”…

He went on to add “This would weaken the BBC; threaten its independence; reduce accountability to licence fee payers and could in time lead to a bigger licence fee because it could merge with general taxation and be used for causes that have nothing to do with broadcasting.”

The cash from the BCC was called “direct public funding” by Stephen Carter, the author of the Digital Britain report and following the loss of any commitment from the ITV regional news he also proposed that bidders for a new structure of multimedia regional new consortia should be financed by money from the BBC.

Source – Paid Content