Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has said the BBC has a problem with “groupthink” and needs saving from itself.

Ms Dorries – who froze the BBC licence fee in January – likened the broadcaster to a “polar bear on a shrinking ice cap”.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, she said: “There is a problem with groupthink within the BBC, and I don’t think those people think they are left or they are right.

“I think they just believe they are absolutely right about everything. And they have a world view and a view of the UK, which is, I think, sometimes very wrong.

“Our responsibility is to save the BBC from itself, because it is that polar bear on a shrinking ice cap.”

She said she thought the BBC’s funding model would not exist “into the future” regardless of her actions as Secretary because “it will hit the buffers as more people refuse to pay the licence fee”.

Ms Dorries also commented on her loyalty to the Prime Minister amid tensions within the Tory party in the wake of partygate.

She said: “I’m old-school politics. The prime minister gave me my job as a secretary of state, and for that I owe him my absolute undying loyalty.”