"The only certain outcome is a strong BBC, independent of government," says the DCMS Charter Review public consultation pamphlet.

If only we could really be that certain!

As a current affairs producer I came to understand that complaints about 'balance' could be expected to arrive in equal measures from left to right of the political spectrum.

As long as those measures were indeed equal we knew that we were probably getting the tone, if not always the current, right.

It has always been the case that politicians will complain about broadcasters in general and the BBC in particular. Want a good round of applause at a party meeting? Take a cheap swipe at the Reds in, and the Blues under, the Corporation bed.

Everyone knows the BBC is biased and if you tell people what they want to hear they will bring the rafters down. It goes with the territory.

More recently, though, the game has become rather more sinister.

It is not unreasonable, those now broadcasting tell me, to suggest Downing Street has sought to exert unwarranted, unjustified and unacceptable pressure to bear in an endeavour to influence the editorial judgment of the nation’s public service broadcaster.

Prior to, and through the Iraq war, the stream of telephone calls from government to editors was relentless.

We have only been allowed to see one side of the correspondence between the director general and the prime minister – the latter has resisted parliamentary requests to publish his letter of March 19 2003 – but from reading of the director general’s response it is clear that the intervention was exceptional and probably unprecedented.

We live in the aftermath of Kelly and Gilligan, the resignation of the chairman, Gavyn Davies, the departure of the director general, Greg Dyke and what I at least regard as a supine "unreserved apology" to the government from those BBC governors too craven to walk with honour.

Is this really the recipe for "a strong BBC, independent of government"? I think not.

Questions are rightly asked about the structure of corporate governance of the BBC about the breadth and depth of its remit, about "dumbing down", about commercial activity, about the continued relevance and acceptability of the licence fee and those questions will all have to have to be satisfactorily answered during the Charter Review.

If, though, we do not robustly defend and protect the jewel in the crown that this editorial integrity and true independence from governments of whatever political persuasion then the well-earned reputation of the "the least worst broadcaster in the world" will be gone forever and with it the whole justification for the public service broadcaster.

There is a great deal at stake. The BBC is either free of all the shackles of overweening politicians or it is nothing.

Roger Gale is Conservative MP for Thanet North.