Ms Jowell said she wanted the public to decide the BBC's future

Ms Jowell repeated comments that getting rid of the fee was "somewhere between the impossible and improbable".

"A better proposition may come forward and I am entirely open to that," she told The Guardian. "But the default position remains the licence fee."

Fee payers will decide the BBC's future through a public debate, she added.

Funding debate

The BBC charter - through which the government sets out how the corporation should be funded and how much money it gets - is up for renewal in 2006.

But the debate in the media about the major issues has already begun.

Ms Jowell said the public would soon have the chance to have their say on topics ranging from the number of channels to the type of programmes.

Town hall meetings, surveys and other public forums would be used to gauge the mood among viewers, listeners and readers, she said.

Strained relations

She also stressed that the government's conflict with the BBC over the Hutton Inquiry would not influence the charter renewal.

"If I could ever look forward to a year when there wouldn't be strained relations between the government and the BBC then I would be a dewy-eyed optimist," she told the newspaper.

It was part of a "creative tension", she said, adding that most people did not care about it.

"People like you and me may have become obsessed about this so-called row between the government and the BBC," she said.

"But when I've been doing consultations with my constituency, not one person has raised the row - it's a marginal issue."