BBC strike called off after row over David Cameron's speech

The strikers had planned to black out David Cameron's party conference speech next week, but Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of the broadcasting workers' union Bectu, said an improved offer will be put to a ballot of members.

The BBC workers are still threatening to pull the plug on coverage of the comprehensive spending review on October 20.

Mr Morrissey said: "We have had a significantly improved offer from the BBC which we believe is the best that can be achieved through negotiation. If it is accepted, all the action will be called off, but if it is rejected, strikes will take place. We welcome the movement from the BBC."

Labour leader Ed Miliband this afternoon urged restraint from the strikers. He said his rival's speech should be broadcast without interruption in the name of fairness.

"Whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute between Bectu and the BBC, they should not be blacking out the Prime Minister's speech," he said.

"My speech was seen and heard on the BBC and in the interests of impartiality and fairness, so the Prime Minister's should be."

Although he criticised the threat, Mr Miliband has avoided either condemning or supporting individual disputes such as the Tube strike that is due to disrupt London next week.

In his leader's speech at the Manchester conference he said he would have "no truck" with "overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes".

Mr Morrissey reacted angrily to Mr Miliband's comments. "As a Labour Party affiliate, Bectu places on record its dissatisfaction with Ed Miliband's statement today," he said.

"The leader's intervention is not helpful and is dismissive of our actions as a responsible trade union which has been negotiating with the employer on this issue for three long months."

Several star presenters and BBC reporters, including Jeremy Paxman, Nick Robinson and Emily Maitlis, have protested against the strike on the grounds that picking on one party leader will look to viewers like anti-Tory bias.

Unions for journalists, technicians and other broadcast staff have united to oppose cost-cutting changes to pensions.

Trade unions Bectu, the National Union of Journalists and Unite could still threaten action on October 19 and 20, when Chancellor George Osborne is to unveil details of his comprehensive spending review, if the deal is rejected.

Conservative chairman Baroness Warsi wrote to the corporation urging it to find a way of ensuring the live broadcast went out, to ensure equal treatment with Labour and the Liberal Democrats whose conferences were broadcast as normal.

Director-general Mark Thompson told a staff pension forum that the public should get "undisrupted high quality services" or the BBC's reputation would suffer.

"Impartiality is the watch word and we do not want to give the misleading impression that this is no longer something we value highly. To be clear this is not a comment on the principle of strike action," he said.

The strike call came after a BBC announcement of plans to cap pensionable pay at one per cent from next April and revalue pensions at a lower level, which unions said effectively devalued pensions already earned.

BBC management said the changes were needed to try to tackle a huge pension deficit of more than £1.5 billion.

Only 3,850 BBC staff out of 17,000 voted for the two strikes. In an email, the "star" presenters raised "serious concerns" about the action, saying it "risks looking unduly partisan".

But Alastair Campbell, the former No 10 press chief, said the Tories would be better off without "ego" driven BBC reporters interpreting their words. NUJ official Ian Pollock dismissed the BBC presenters as "non-members".