The number of people evading the TV licence fee has fallen but non-payment still costs each law-abiding television viewer £6 a year, the National Audit Office says today.

According to the watchdog, the percentage of people evading the charge has dropped to between 5.2 per cent and 7.6 per cent - although the total bill for non payment is still in the region of £141 million a year.

Forum Response: BBC

A spokesman for the BBC told ePolitix.com: "The BBC welcomes the conclusions of the NAO report and is pleased that Sir John Bourn has praised the corporation for the good work it has already done to reduce the evasion rate and strengthen the collection and enforcement arrangements.

"The report endorses what we have achieved in the continuing downward trend of evasion. Since the BBC took over licence fee collection from the Home Office in 1991, evasion has halved from 9.9 per cent to between 4 per cent and 4.5 per cent at March 2002. Licences issued have grown by more than 3.8 million to a record 23.7 million in March 2002, an increase of 20 per cent.

"TV licence evasion is against the law. We prefer people to pay their licence rather than be prosecuted. It is our job to ensure that those who do pay should not be disadvantaged by those who don't, so we will continue to pursue all evaders whose actions make less money available for programmes.

"The success of our actions is evident in the achievements of the last financial year. Recent figures show we have brought in an additional £35 million for making programmes by growing licences by more than 300,000. We expect evasion to have reduced significantly again due to the growth in licences and the 12 per cent increase in evaders caught, up by 50,000 in the year to 448,000 by March 2002.

"The BBC was already working on the issues on which the NAO has made recommendations. We are already visiting more more unlicensed addresses in evenings and at weekends, when potential evaders are more likely to be at home. We are also continuing our efforts to ensure that retailers furnish us with the name and address of everyone who purchases or rents a television, as they are legally obliged to do and reviewing our payment schemes to make it as easy as possible to pay.

"We look forward to working with our new contractors, Capita and the AMV group. As leaders in their fields, we believe we will achieve even better results working with them in the future."