Digital Britain

I am in favour of the gouging of the licence fee—it is not sharing, but top-slicing. It concedes that the recent inflation-busting increase in the licence fee was totally unnecessary and has led to huge pay for the director-general, Mark Thompson, of more than £800,000 a year and bloated pay deals for the BBC's so-called top talent, such as Jonathan Ross, of more than £6 million a year. Doubtless, other so-called stars earn mega sums of money. If the BBC starts bleating, the Minister should ask it to examine some of the pay deals that it has done in the past two to three years—that is where the fat can be cut from the land. On the pilots, I ask the Minister to look at the north-west. Granada is a superb news-delivery organisation, but it needs support now, not in two or three years. The support needs to be brought forward if it is to be effective.