Computer users 'could need TV licence'

Many TV services can now be accessed via the internet

People who watch BBC television through a computer could be forced to buy a TV licence, a senior civil servant has said.

Sue Street, permanent secretary at the Department for Culture Media and Sport, said that there could be changes in how the government defines a TV set.

Ms Street told the Commons Public Accounts committee on Monday that new technologies had opened up other ways of receiving TV services.

Mr Yeo wants to see the BBC licence fee cut

And she cited the example of Channel 4 reality show Big Brother, which people could watch in multiple different ways through computer technology and digital TV services.

She said that in the light of these developments, the government was considering amending the forthcoming Communications Bill to give the culture secretary the power to redefine what constituted a TV set - and what constituted a TV dealer.

But she told the committee, which was discussing licence fee evasion, that there were no proposals to do make these changes yet.

The BBC licence fee has been the subject of renewed debate in recent weeks, after shadow Culture Secretary Tim Yeo proposed that the BBC should be cut in size and limited to public service broadcasting.

He said the move would make it possible to make big cuts in the annual licence fee.

Mr Yeo wrote in the Financial Times that the licence fee was "a compulsory and regressive television tax".

'Damaging'

The proposal led to a defence of the licence fee from BBC chairman Gavyn Davies at the Social Market Foundation conference.

Depriving the BBC of the licence fee would leave it so under-funded it would have to pad out channels with cheap programming, Mr Davies warned.

The move would be "difficult and damaging" Mr Davies said, and he dismissed the Tory proposals as unworkable and said they would mean the closure of BBC Two altogether.

"We have always existed to make the good popular and to make the popular good," he added.