Live Coverage: Birt delivers MacTaggart lecture

Lord Birt has just finished delivering this year's MacTaggart lecture, where he urged for the preservation of public service broadcasting as analogue shutdown looms.

"On the current path," he said, "we are heading for an inevitability: the BBC will face less and less competition as a public service broadcaster. It will be close to the monopoly supplier it once was before 1955 - a bleak prospect. If we are to have any hope of conserving a splendid tradition, public policy has to maintain the existence of strong public service broadcasters and to promote effective competitionthe BBC's regulation as between them."

Other highlights:

- Birt described it as "vital" that Channel 4 be sufficiently well funded to be able to "snap at the heels of the BBC".

- He criticised the BBC's regulation, describing it as "brilliantly anarchic". "The pressure within the institution to address failure has always been weak," he said. "Beady modern regulators in other sectors have shown just how effectively this kind of scrutiny can be shown."

Full news report to follow tomorrow.