A new department should be set up by the government to oversee the communications industry, a committee of MPs has said.

The culture, media and sport committee delivered its radical plans on Thursday and called on the government to implement its recommendation "at the earliest opportunity".

MPs believe that the communications responsibilities, currently split between the DTI and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, should be brought under one department.

Committee chairman Gerald Kaufman told journalists: "We are recommending the amplification of a department. This new department is a much more sensible structure. This industry is one of tremendous importance and it isn't being given the prominence it ought to have. The fact that there are two secretaries of state with different remits blunts the impact."

The BBC's operational future also came under fire by the report into the government's comminications white paper.

"The way the BBC is run strikes us as being very old-fashioned indeed," said Kaufman. "The BBC was founded in the 1920s as a sole broadcaster and went on as a sole broadcaster until the 1950s. There are now more broadcasters than is possible to count without referring to a book. A board of directors made up of members of the community would be a better way of doing things."

The committee also endorsed the comments of Liz Forgan, the former head of BBC radio who advised the government for the white paper, who recommended that the BBC should be brought under the control of the new regulator and not its board of governors.

"It seems utterly anomalous that there should be one broadcaster which does not come under the remit of the new Ofcom regulator," said Kaufman.

MPs were also critical of the fact that decisions over the BBC's commercial activities would ultimately be decided by parliament.

"The new regulator is best placed to judge this impact. We expect that the new regulator would be given powers to ensure that, while the BBC retained the right and the ability to continue with services and to launch new services funded from the licence fee, such services would be conducted on the basis of fair competition," the report said.