Digital Britain, a white paper produced by Lord Carter of Barnes, the Communications Minister is expected to indicate that £50mln a year of the licence could be “top sliced” and set aside for other news producers for ITV. A further £30mln could be made available for producers to make current affairs documentaries for TV or the internet. It also concerns kids’ programming on ITV or Channel 4. Full details will be available tomorrow with the public presentation of this report.

Obviously, BBC will react, but would not comment this report until the report was made public. Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust said last month that licence fee should be used only to pay for BBC-related content. He added : ‘Licence fee-payers give us their money in good faith. To suddenly tell them their money is being siphoned off would be more than an act of bad faith, it would be tantamount to breaking a contract.’

Many reactions will be expected after the public release of this report.