Licence fee 'may need to rise' says former chairman Gavyn Davies Mr Davies was speaking to an audience that included Lord Patten of Barnes, chairman of the BBC Trust, and Tim Davie, the acting Director-General, The Times reported. He said: "I know that putting the licence fee up at a time of real stringency for households is not going to be welcome to anybody. But what I would hope is that, as soon as the constraints begin to lift, the licence fee can start to rise again, because what I don't want to see is a permanent situation where the role of public service funding is simply declining [long term] compared to subscription in the private sector. Asked how much the fee should rise by, Mr Davies reportedly insisted he was merely saying he hoped it would be "possible" to raise it. I don't think it's sensible to say what the appropriate licence fee is in four or five years' time. It come a week after a BBC study argued that it generated £2 for the British economy for every £1 it gets from licence fee payers.