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Electronic Communications

Before the previous intervention, the hon. Gentleman made the entirely accurate point that the advertising slump has seen a huge chunk of money taken out of ITV's revenue and therefore out of commercial production. However, there seems to be an odd logic in saying that ITV's losing £500 million is a pretext to take tens of millions of pounds out of the BBC's budget. If we are losing hundreds of millions of pounds from production because of the advertising slump, is it not true that now is not the time to cut the licence fee?