Twenty per cent of BBC News journalists are at risk of losing their jobs, with the flagship One O’Clock NewsTV bulletin under threat in swingeing staff cuts to be announced next week.

Jeremy Dear, the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said that he understood that “600 to 700 jobs are at risk” out of a total of 3,000 – a level of cuts that if implemented will almost certainly lead to strikes in the run-up to Christmas.

BBC staff and unions also said that they understood serious consideration was being given to plans to merge the One O’Clock News with a half-hour feed taken from the BBC News 24 channel. The corporation denied this last night.

The cuts in BBC News, at the level feared, would amount to more than 20 per cent of the workforce - far deeper than the 2,600, or 10 to 12 per cent, expected across the corporation as a whole. Savings are needed to meet a £2 billion shortfall after the Government awarded the BBC a lower licence fee than Mark Thompson, the Director-General, had asked for.

Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, said: “What concerns most people is the lack of strategic direction. On the one hand they buy Lonely Planet guidebooks, on the other it seems they are making savage cuts to core public service channels such as news and documentaries.”

Morale across the BBC has been battered by Mr Thompson’s response to controversies in which mid-level and junior staff have been sacked or disciplined after a series of phone-in scandals.

The only senior executive to lose his job was Peter Fincham, the popular controller of BBC One, who resigned last week after the corporation was criticised for releasing inaccurately edited footage of the Queen.

A series of mergers between television, radio and online newsrooms is expected in a rationalisation aimed at cutting the number of BBC journalists who cover the same events.

Journalists also believe that a merger of the Six and Ten O’Clock News teams is likely, while cuts in the number of junior staff have been sought at programmes such as Today and Newsnight.

BBC News said: “BBC plans to reprioritise its budget in the light of the licence fee settlement have yet to be decided and will go before the BBC Trust on Wednesday next week. Until decisions are made, we have no comment on what may or may not happen.” An announcement to BBC staff is scheduled a day later, on October 18.

Sources close to BBC managers cautioned yesterday that while there would be “some pain”, the level of job cuts and impact on BBC News may not be as great as the unions, which have given warning of a possible 72-hour strike, feared.

Late last night a BBC spokesman said: “Any suggestion that the One O’Clock News bulletin is under threat or to be axed is complete nonsense.”

Yesterday afternoon the NUJ and broadcast union Bectu met Sir Michael Lyons, the BBC chairman, in a scheduled meeting that events turned into a crisis summit.

Officials plan to ballot for strike action if Mr Thompson proposes compulsory redundancies. Gerry Morrissey, the general secretary of Bectu, said: “We understand that 80 per cent of the jobs could go in the next two years. I don’t see how that can be achieved without compulsory redundancies and, if the BBC gives that to us as a fait accompli, we will be looking at balloting our members.”

Any industrial action would be strike action, he added, and held out the possibility of “24, 48, or 72-hour action” that could disrupt programmes at Christmas.

About 17,900 staff work at the BBC’s licence-fee funded operations, and 23,000 work across the corporation in total.

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