MPs have come to blows with the BBC following the publication of the corporation's annual report.

During a Commons culture select committee hearing, Labour MP Chris Bryant was asked to apologise for comparing the BBC's accounts with those of failed energy company Enron.

"I thought it was disgraceful, the use of the word Enron," said the corporation's director general, Greg Dyke.

"That is a corrupt financial organisation and that's what you're implying and that is not acceptable. I look forward to your apology at a later time."

Placed on the defensive by the broadside, the Rhondda MP defended his criticism of the annual report.

"I am quite happy to apologise for any implication you feel that has been made of anybody being financially corrupt," he said.

"But the point that I'm trying to make...is very simply that the bits that are in this report, and the bits that are missing from a report, leads to a report which is misleading, I believe."

He went on to criticise the praise given to the BBC by its board of governors for the launch of terrestrial digital service Freeview.

"You herald Freeview's launch and you congratulate yourselves for it, or the board of governors do, but my experience as a constituency MP is that it's not available in my constituency, it's not available in any of the neighbouring constituencies to me, but those people pay exactly the same licence fee," Bryant said.

"So it seems crazy to me that your annual report is extremely economical with the truth because it never says at any point that there is only 67 per cent [availability]."

Dyke said the decision to allow the same licence fee to be charged in all parts of the country was taken by the government.

"The Labour government decided at the time when there was a recommendation from the Davis committee that there should be a digital licence fee...the government of the day chose that wasn't the way they wanted to go," he noted.

"And instead they decided that there should be one licence fee, and that therefore for a period of time - and let's assume there is analogue switch-off in the latter part of this decade, which I still believe is possible - and that for a period there would be more people paying for services they would not be receiving."