The BBC should be “cut back to the bone”, Nigel Farage has told reporters during a walkabout in Kent. The UKIP leader said the license fee should be roughly a third of its current level, bringing it down from £145.50 to £48.50

According to the Daily Express Nigel Farage said: “I would like to see the BBC cut back to the bone to be purely a public service broadcaster with an international reach and I would have thought you could do that with a licence fee that was about a third of what it currently is.”

There have already been moves to cut back on the enormous cost and scope of the BBC. Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen successfully amended the Deregulation Bill last year to decriminalise non-payment of the License Fee. At the time he claimed the “vast majority” of uncontested cases before magistrates courts were related to non-payment of the License Fee.

Farage’s comments came as the BBC was forced to admit less than a third of the audience at the Opposition Leaders’ Debate supported right-wing parties. The corporation brought in the pollsters ICM to select the audience. They brought in people from the London region, which is traditionally much more left-wing than the rest of England.

ICM also used the following ratio to pick them: Conservative 5, Labour 5, Lib Dem 4, UKIP 3, SNP 2, Green 2 and Plaid 1. In reality the combined support for the political right in the UK is much higher than this ratio gives them credit for.

The BBC has also been under pressure recently because of the sacking of Jeremy Clarkson. The Top Gear presenter was pushed out of the corporation for a minor altercation with a producer. Clarkson is now suing the BBC because one of their spokesman compared him to the paedophile Jimmy Saville.