SIR - Shipley MP Philip Davies’ constituents should bear in mind that the license fee is £3 per week. That buys them BBC TV and radio, internet and phone app, and Channel Four, and it wouldn’t buy them very much on Sky or Netflix. Imagine how little choice of content there would be without the BBC - no comprehensive worldwide news and current affairs, no comedy, literature content, drama. Just continual metrosexual drivel from commercial stations.

I agree some presenters' fees are disturbingly high. Maybe that's the ‘market’, I’m sure footy fans wouldn't accept second rate pundits on MOTD. But for Philip Davies to infer that if the BBC got rid of Lineker the over-75s in Shipley could have free TV licences is fatuous.

PC does seem excessive and ‘Diversity’ seems an obsession. All of this is correctable by a suitable Director General.

Gordon Brown gave away free non means-tested TV licences for over-75s, at tax payers' expense. David Cameron shifted this financial burden to the BBC, between licence fee reviews, so this social benefit problem was created by one political party in government then compounded by the next government.

The BBC is the world’s best broadcaster and retains its mantra “to educate, entertain and inform”. Three quid a week. Be careful not to risk the future of a national treasure for the sake of a few political anxieties and avarice.

Denis Spence, Mitchell Close, Idle