Proposed cuts at the BBC will be “deeply damaging” to the quality of the service, the chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Media Group said last Thursday.

Labour’s Austin Mitchell told MPs in the Commons a one-fifth spending reduction over half a decade involving the shedding of 2,000 jobs would deal a “blow” to creativity.

The BBC, he said, should not be treated “in this horrendous fashion of cuts, sacrifice and dumbing down”.

The MP for Great Grimsby said he was an admirer of the BBC, calling it “an institution of which we in Britain can be proud”.

But, he said that institution was now threatened as the licence fee settlement was the “worst in the BBC’s history”, frozen at £145 (€169) for six years, plus a requirement to finance the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring from 2014 – a previous responsibility of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

He said: “BBC World Service does a better job for Britain in the world than the Foreign Office and all its pinstriped mandarins put together.”

He added: “These cuts are going to be deeply damaging to the quality of the service from the BBC. You can’t force a 20 per cent spending reduction over five years, a loss of 2,000 jobs, 1,000 of them in the vital news services, without a blow to creativity and all the creative industries which supply and support the BBC, without doing deep damage.”

In a message to the BBC Trust he urged them to “please go easier and slower”, particularly with the cuts to local services.

He urged the BBC management to reconsider the proposals in Delivering Quality First.

Mr Mitchell called on the Government to take responsibility and “if and when” it became clear that the cuts were “destroying quality”, it should “stand ready to provide a supplementary licence fee”.

Poll evidence, he added, indicated people were prepared to pay more on their licence fee.