The BBC is now engaged in advanced negotiations with Mr Whittingdale about its future size and scope as its current ten year Royal Charter expires on December 31. The date for the change has yet to be confirmed.
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“These reforms help make sure the BBC creates the highest quality, distinctive content for all audiences, including those in Wales”.
The BBC Trust is to be abolished and replaced with a new unitary board with media and telecommunications regulator Ofcom taking over the Trust’s regulatory role.
The Cuilture Secretary told MPs: “The BBC is and must always remain at the very heart of British life”.
The BBC is to be regulated by an external organisation for the first time in its 90-year history.
The broadcaster’s Director-General Tony Hall said: “There has been a big debate about the future of the BBC”. The licence fee concession for over 75s will be protected until the next review.
New government changes to the law mean that no-one will be able to use BBC iPlayer without first buying a TV license. “It is vital for the future of the BBC that its independence is fully preserved”.
The new paper states that the licence fee will increase in line with inflation for five years, meaning the current annual fee of £145.50 will rise from 2017 until 2022.
He claimed Mr Whittingdale was attempting to undermine the BBC ahead of a “hatchet job” on its operations.
The BBC will also have to enshrine a commitment to diversity in the Charter.
The BBC is now funded through an annual licence fee of £145.50 which all British households with a television have to pay.
“It has levels of public approval that any politician would die for, and it is the linchpin of a unique ecology of broadcasting in this country, which enables the creative industries in Britain to grow at twice the level of the rest of the economy, exporting more content and employing more people than its size would suggest possible”.
Speculation has also been rife about whether or not Mr Whittingdale will force the BBC to publish how much it pays top talent earning more than £450,000.
The MP said a year ago: “The working class environment in which I grew up had many stories to tell and that is still the case, but we seem to hear the same types of stories from the same types of people”. This would be a paid-for service for the public to access services beyond what the BBC traditionally offers.
As was expected, the BBC Trust, the self-regulatory body previously charged with overseeing the BBC, will be scapped.
A new mission statement for the BBC: “To act in the public interest, serving all audiences with impartial, high-quality and distinctive media content and services that inform, educate and entertain”.
“At the end, we have an eleven-year Charter, a licence fee guaranteed for eleven years, and an endorsement of the scale and scope of what the BBC does today”.
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Damian Lewis has echoed his support for his Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky and co-star Mark Rylance, who launched a passionate defence of the BBC at the recent Bafta TV Awards.
