Mr Hunt said the corporation should "stop behaving like a commercial channel" and senior managers would have to take responsibility if investigations identify personal failures on their part.

BBC director-general Mark Thompson suspended all phone-in competitions last week after discovering a host of editorial breaches involving shows such as Children In Need and Comic Relief.

The revelations came in the wake of the row over a BBC1 trailer edited to imply the Queen had stormed out of a sitting with photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Mr Hunt told ITV1's The Sunday Programme: "I think we need to see the results of the independent inquiry that's happening now and also the BBC's internal inquiry. I think it's very important that people do take responsibility for what's gone wrong: if we find that the failings are at a senior management level then yes, senior management should take responsibility as well.

Asked if the revelations made it harder for the BBC to justify the licence fee he replied: "If they don't sort this out very quickly then yes. We will, in the next few years, be going back in to the debate about whether the licence fee can be justified.

"There are voices that say that in a multi-platform, multi-channel age the BBC should be a subscription service, and you should be able to opt in to not be forced to pay the licence fee.

"The justification of the licence fee is that the BBC does things that the market alone won't provide."

"So I think the lesson from this is the BBC has got to stop behaving like a commercial channel and it's got to start behaving like the gold-standard that we all want the BBC to be."

"I think it will affect the debate over the licence fee if they are not able to restore trust very very quickly."