This is taken from The Guardian:

MPs reject Tory move to block licence fee increase
BBC Trust chairman warned he is 'verging into political territory' during debate on Conservative licence fee motion
by Ben Dowell, Wednesday 20 May 2009 19.01 BST.

MPs today rejected a Tory motion to block this year's £3 annual increase in the BBC licence fee and freeze the charge at £139.50.

Debate began around 5pm today, and the motion was rejected by 334 votes to 156 just after 6.30pm, following often acerbic exchanges in the Commons.

During the course of the debate, the Tory chair of the Commons culture media and sport select committee, John Whittingdale MP, said he was "profoundly disturbed" by a speech made on Tuesday evening by the BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, in which he criticised the Conservative party's plan to freeze the annual £3.6bn licence fee.

"More and more the chairman of the trust is a champion of the BBC," said Whittingdale. "He is verging into political territory, which is dangerous."

Whittingdale insisted that "debating the public money that goes to the BBC ... is the function of this house" and said that Lyons is in danger of "overstepping the mark".

In attacking the motion to freeze the licence fee during today's Parliamentary debate the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, criticised the Tory leader.

"The Conservatives are attacking the principle over which the BBC has been funded over the years," he told the Commons, quoting Cameron's speech on freezing the BBC licence fee and a promise to look at funding every year. "The uncertainty that this would create would be disastrous for the BBC and for licence fee payers."

"This is about posturing and easy and cheap headlines ... traditional BBC bashing," Burnham said during today's debate, calling it a "fundamental misunderstanding" and an "ill-conceived Tory attack".

The Tory proposals would impose "unprepared and retrospective cuts" on the BBC, added the Liberal Democrat culture spokesman Don Foster, which would have a "dire ... effect on the creative economy".

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, defended the Conservative plan, and a number of other Tory MPs made the point that a licence fee freeze now, when inflation was below zero, did not represent a cut in the BBC's income. It was an important measure which was required in what Hunt called "dire economic circumstances".

Lyons, in his speech earlier this week to media executives, warned against "top slicing" the BBC's £3.6bn a year in public funding, arguing that licence-fee money should not be used to pay for "things that have nothing to do with the BBC's public purposes".

Lyons said a licence fee freeze and annual vote on an increase would be disastrous, describing it as "a recipe for curbing the editorial independence of the BBC".

"People would do well to remember that licence fee payers give us their money in good faith, believing it will be spent on BBC services and content," Lyons said, in a Royal Television Society speech.

The Commons vote on the increase is normally a formality but today's vote was forced by the Tories after the party leader, David Cameron, called for the licence fee to be frozen.