Good Morning Britain's US Correspondent, Noel Phillips, has been axed from the daytime show amid sweeping redundancies across ITV 's daytime brands. Phillips's pending exit has sparked concern internally about the show's on-air diversity after Daily Mail previously revealed Adil Ray was facing the axe too.

A consultation process about the former This Morning presenter's future remains ongoing but ITV is laying off around half of the 450 employees who work across GMB, Lorrain, This Morning and Loose Women - with Noel expected to be one of them. The Royal Television Society award-winning journalist joined GMB in 2021 from Sky News and he has been central to coverage of racial unrest in the US and UK.

He was close to gunfire in Minneapolis when reporting on the protests that followed the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright by police office Kim Potter. Noel recently spoke about suffering a racist attack in London two years ago and more recently he was hit by a rubber bullet during his reporting on the June protests in Los Angeles .

ITV is closing GMB's offices in the US as it moves the show under the control of ITN, the independent production company that makes ITV News. In May ITV announced there would be dramatic changes to their daytime TV schedule, with Lorraine Kelly's show slashed from an hour to 30 minutes and, like Loose Women, will only air 30 weeks of the year .

Top TV talents including Lorraine, 65, whose career spans over 40 years, are believed to be 'furious' and 'insulted' over the shake-up while the Loose Women are already fearing inevitable job losses. The new regime, set to come into effect in January, will cost a potential 300 staff members their jobs as a consultation period begins as soon as today, lasting until September, before employees are finally let go in December. 

But just as Lorraine's beloved daytime show is about to be hit by savage cuts, her ratings have shot through the roof. Currently being presented by Christine Lampard, 46, during the holidays, the ITV show, which will soon be cut right down to half the amount of hours on air, has overtaken This Morning.

Yesterday, Lorraine's morning programme attracted a peak of 700,000 viewers, whilst This Morning which has been presented by Rochelle Humes and Dermot O’Leary , had 675,000. A TV insider said: 'You can only imagine what Lorraine will think. Whilst she's on holiday Christine steps into her shoes and suddenly her show takes over This Morning.'