New culture secretary keeps an open mind on licence fee

Andy Burnham, the new civilization secretary, hailed the BBC as the basis of the public broadcast media system yesterday but refused to govern out top slicing portion of the license fee for other telecasting and radiocommunication outlets.

Speaking on a visit to a comprehensive school, Daniel Hudson Daniel Hudson Burnham said he had an "open mind" on the reappraisal of the license fee launched by his predecessor, Jesse James Purnell.

Channel 4 desires license fee money to be diverted to it to assist it fulfil its public service remit.

"I am a very strong truster in the BBC, but in a changing landscape you should go on to have got an unfastened head about the manner to fund public service broadcast media in the future," Daniel Hudson Daniel Hudson Daniel Hudson Burnham said.

"I don't come up into this station shutting off questions, nor should you jump to any decisions about what that agency for the license fee ... they [the BBC] are a basis of the broadcast media system and long may that stay the case."

The school Burnham visited is in Stoke Newington, north London, and the likely pick for the children of his cabinet co-workers Erectile Dysfunction Balls and Yvette Cooper.

"I must be the luckiest adult male in United Kingdom today," he told students.

Burnham worked as a particular advisor to Labour's first civilization secretary, Chris Smith, in the late 1990s.

"Coming dorsum to the DCMS, it's a very different human race out there. It's a different cultural landscape, it's a different sporting landscape, and it's absolutely a different broadcast media landscape," he said, acknowledging that could necessitate new legislation. "If we are flat-footed and don't see the manner the human race is changing, then we potentially can damage industry, we can lose competitory advantages that are out there, but also we can not react to what the public want."

Burnham studied English Language at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

His most committed leisure time activities are supporting Everton and rugby football conference baseball club Vivien Leigh Centurions. He is a former decision maker for the Football Undertaking Force, launched by Labor to urge reforms to the game.

He said on Thursday that as Treasury head secretary with duty for dividing departmental disbursement he had given the DCMS a good settlement.

Its support to 2011 is expected to maintain gait with inflation.

Young squad

Gordon Brown's new-look cabinet

Brown, 56; Alistair Darling, 54; Saint David Miliband, 42; Jack Straw, 61; Jacqui Smith, 45; Diethylstilbestrol Browne, 55; Alan Johnson, 57; Hilary Benn, 54; Stephen A. Douglas Alexander, 40; Toilet Hutton, 52; Harriet Harman, 57; Alice Paul Murphy, 59; Jesse James Purnell, 37; Babe Ruth Kelly, 39; Hazel Blears, 51; Geoff Hoon, 54; Erectile Dysfunction Balls, 40; Erectile Dysfunction Miliband, 38; Andy Burnham, 38; Shaun Woodward, 49; Lady Ashton, 51; Yvette Cooper, 38; Toilet Denham, 54; Entire age: 1,121 Average age: 49

Tony Blair's last cabinet

Total age: 1,249; Average age: 54