This week the BBC announced changes to its political programming. When I say changes, I mean cuts. BBC Parliament will just cover Parliament and the devolved assemblies when they are sitting and the UK wide Sunday Politics is axed.

The main changes are outlined here:

A new team giving better digital and social coverage – including podcasts – of politics and parliament for audiences who are increasingly getting their news online, especially on mobiles. In an era of concerns about misinformation and ‘echo chambers’ this is designed to bring trusted impartial political coverage to younger audiences

A new daily political programme – Politics Live – which will replace Daily Politics from Monday to Friday.

A new BBC One half hour stand-alone Sunday Politics programme for each of the nations and English regions, replacing the ‘opts’ currently shown within the Sunday Politics. This will now be shown immediately after Andrew Marr. The UK-wide network edition of Sunday Politics will no longer be broadcast after this month (July).

A changed schedule for BBC Parliament: the channel will still broadcast live and replayed coverage of Parliament and the devolved parliaments and assemblies, but will no longer make bespoke programmes and will not air in the weeks when the UK Parliament or the devolved Parliaments and assemblies are not sitting.

This country is at a really turning point. What happens in the next year could set us back for generations. You would think, then, that coverage of political events should be enhanced, not cut back.

The cuts to BBC Parliament will mean that coverage of the Party Conferences will not be shown live. Certainly there aren’t debates to speak of at Conservative Conferences and Labour get rid of anything controversial behind closed doors but it’s important for voters to be able to see how political parties make their decisions. If the BBC is going to be there filming anyway, surely it might as well go up? It also makes it easier for party members who can’t be at Conference to see what is going on. We have been streaming our stuff anyway for ourselves these past few years but it’s one thing it going out on our You Tube channel and quite another on a national platform.

I can see the argument behind the Marr/Sunday Politics decision. They are two very similar programmes and there’s an argument you don’t need both. However, if I had to choose between Andrew Marr and Sarah Smith, it would be Sarah Smith every time for me. She will give people quite a hard time and asks the big questions that Marr often ducks.

It bothers me that the opportunity for politicians to be closely questioned and scrutinised are being cut back. In recent years, BBC Scotland has cut its nighttime Newsnight equivalent and its Friday lunchtime political debate programme.

What worries me most about BBC coverage is that they seem to think that impartiality means giving equivalence to arguments with no proper analysis. They also don’t give a wide enough range of views. Despite our unique viewpoint, we struggle to get coverage on the prime time news programmes.

This really isn’t the time for there to be less politics on tv. There is an argument for better political coverage, though. I’m not hopeful from this announcement that this will be the case. It’s a time for in-depth analysis and not glossing over stuff with soundbites.

The BBC should think again about these cuts.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron’s Musings