Abolishing the TV licence fee would save almost £100m a year - money that could be better spent on the NHS.

There are 25 million homes in the UK, and 98 per cent have a colour TV; another 1 per cent have a black and white set. In 1996-97 the BBC got£1.9bn from 22 million licence fees, which are collected by Subscription Services Ltd, a Post Office subsidiary.

The Post Office's annual report reveals that each of SSL's 500 detector-van staff identifies on average two evaders every day.

Conscientious TV licence payers will be surprised by - and resent - the fact that one in eight households fails to contribute to the BBC's running costs until its evasion is traced and penalised.

Others will be bemused that such an arcane financing system still operates. It might have been appropriate when few people had sets, but it is now well past its sell-by date.

Licence fees should be dropped and the BBC simply allocated a lump sum.

All political parties would have to guarantee to index it in perpetuity by inflation minus a certain percentage.

This would force the BBC to eliminate inefficient practices, as has happened in other utilities confronted with the same constraint.

It might reduce the absurdly large fees paid to mediocre performers. The BBC would benefit as its revenue would no longer depend on effective collection.

Law-abiding citizens would benefit as those who had evaded the fee would pay through their income tax. Even more appealing, administrative costs would be completely eliminated.

Collecting licence fees cost£96.9m - 5 per cent of total revenue - so deducting that amount would leave the BBC an initial annual allocation of£1.8bn. The secretaries of state for health and culture could then decide how best to split the£96.9m windfall between building new hospitals and saving theatre companies.

Apologies to those at SSL who would be made redundant, but being paid for something which isn't needed can't be satisfying.