We should be clear as to how the BBC reached its current situation.

In October 2010 Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, wrote to Sir Michael Lyons, the then chairman of the BBC Trust, saying the licence fee would be frozen until 2017, and the BBC would be responsible for financing the World Service and a substantial part of the cost of the Welsh language channel, S4C. It would also be obliged to make £25 million available for up to 20 local non-BBC television services and to buy £5m-worth of material annually thereafter from them.

The process by which these fundamental changes took place was not resisted by the trust.

The Corporation may well have brought some of this on itself by paying absurd salaries to senior managers and to a number of star performers.

And now people are losing their jobs, which can only mean blighted careers.

It is clear that there will be less original programming and some of what is lost would have been of quality. However, it might be argued that we do currently suffer from a surfeit of broadcasting, and that much of what goes out, particularly in off-peak hours, is of limited value.

The cuts come at a tricky time. Pacific Quay has been increasing its share of network programming in line with a pledge by the director-general, Mark Thompson. But the proposal there should be a pan-Scottish digital channel is in financial uncertainty.

With the SNP Government committed to a strong cultural policy, and to a stronger Scottish broadcasting sector, there is a danger the cuts and the freezing of the licence fee until 2017 could be one of the flash points in the debate about the future constitutional status of this country.

l David Hutchison is Visiting Professor in Media Policy at Glasgow Caledonian University.