Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general, responded on Tuesday to stinging criticism from the culture secretary, saying he wanted to depersonalise an argument over the licence fee.

Mr Thompson and Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, were questioned about an interview in the Financial Times in which Ben Bradshaw described their leadership as “wrong-headed” and said opposition to government plans to share some of the licence fee with rival broadcasters was “self-defeating”.