MONDAY 1 JULY 2002

MS SUE STREET, MR GREG DYKE, MR JOHN SMITH AND MS ZARIN PATEL

  240. Sorry; the compensation.
  (Mr Smith) We are actively in dialogue with all the courts and the Magistrates' Association but I do not think we have any sanctions to enforce that.

  241. I have had passed to me one mischievous question from Mr Davidson who asks: do you have more chauffeur driven cars than detector vans?
  (Mr Smith) No. We have more detector vans.
  (Mr Dyke) We have reduced the number of chauffeur driven cars from 19 to 5, which is a faster rate of reduction than we have managed with the evasion of licences.

  Mr Davidson: We do not know how many detector vans you have.
  (Mr Dyke) We know.

  242. Thank you for your questions about the scrutiny by the NAO. We look forward to this note. We know there have been no complaints about the National Audit Office trying to interfere with editorial freedom of the BBC, so we will keep that under our scrutiny. On the detector van point, you do not want to tell us in public session how many detector vans in total you have. I take it you do not want to tell us either how many new detector vans you have in service or what proportion of the fleet those represent?
  (Mr Smith) About 10% of the existing fleet will be the new ones but of course, our intention is to roll them all out.

  Mr Williams: Will you tell us how much they cost to run and how many cases they have identified in the course of a year?[10]

  243. It would also be interesting to know how effective the old are compared to the new.
  (Mr Smith) The new are much more effective, of course.

  244. Perhaps you do not want to tell us how effective the old ones are.
  (Mr Smith) They work.

  245. Mr Dyke, if you turn to page 25, paragraph 2.23, you will see there that television licence sales were on course to be some £200 million lower over six years than the BBC had assumed when the licence fee was set. What is the position now? Do you want to send us a note?
  (Mr Smith) That 200 million is if the trend had continued under Envision but a) we changed contractor and the trend has already altered; and b) we still have four years to go before we get to that point.

  246. Mr Dyke, it is a great pleasure to have you in front of us. You are a very robust witness. I think it is your first appearance, is it not?
  (Mr Dyke) It is.

  247. We have much enjoyed having you and we look forward to, I hope, having you in future.
  (Mr Dyke) Thank you very much for inviting us. It is certainly different from the select committee chaired by Mr Kaufman.

  248. Far more polite?
  (Mr Dyke) I do not think I could say.

  Chairman: Obviously, we consider this to be an important matter. There is about £2 billion raised. Our report will reflect what we are told, that your staff made 3.2 million visits in 2000-01 and they managed to sell 632,000 licences, but the majority of the visits were made when the householder was not at home and the property had turned out to be vacant, under construction or licensed already, so despite your good efforts I am sure we will have some recommendations about how you could be even more effective.