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January 27, 2008

Culture secretary: Licence fee changes still an option

By paulmcnally

The new culture secretary, Andy Burnham, has pledged to keep “an open mind” about how public service broadcasting is funded.

His comments come little more than a week after his predecessor, James Purnell, confirmed the government was looking into the possibility of “top slicing” the licence fee to fund broadcasters other than the BBC.

“I don’t come into this post closing off questions, nor should you leap to any conclusions about what that means for the licence fee,” Burnham said. “[The BBC is] a cornerstore of the broadcasting system and long may that remain the case.”

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