Hall has used smoke and mirrors to pull a rabbit out of hat for BBC Scotland

A great deal of questions remain to be answered about the funding of new channel, says John V Lloyd

Tony Hall, BBC Director General, must be a very smug man just now. He has quelled rebellion in the North with a smoke and mirrors performance reminiscent of Paul Daniels. We are not to get a ‘Scottish Six’, nor a percentage of our TV licence fee to be used here in line with Wales, 95 per cent, or Northern Ireland, 74 per cent.

The BBC will increase it to 68 per cent, but even that is not guaranteed. We are to have £30 million for a new BBC Scotland channel although, admittedly, £11m of that is being transferred from programmes made for BBC2 in Scotland. Yet our politicians have fallen for his sleight of hand.

Thescotsman editorialwasmore reflective. Talk of the greatest BBC investment here in years tells you all you need to know about what has gone before in a country which raises £320m in TV licence fees.

The employment of 80 new journalists and funding for drama and documentaries for the UK network are welcome, but why the silence on complete commission and editorial independence?

Why do the changes not come in till autumn 2018, given the BBC pilots are said to be well advanced?

Why is the new BBC Scotland News to be at 9pm? We are not accustomed to that time slot, and will put it in competition directly with the best dramas and documentaries of the week – or have I answered my own question?

If the argument is that it will allow the TV audience to watch the BBC