The BBC’s priority in this election is putting the voters first, giving them the facts and information they need to help them make their democratic choice.
One of the most important ways we do this is to give our audiences – the voters – opportunities to question, challenge, and hold to account representatives of political parties during the campaign – with our long-established Question Time programme, and the newer tradition of election debates.
We’ve invited the seven biggest political parties in Great Britain to participate in our network election debates during the campaign.
We’ll be setting out the details of the network debates in the coming days, along with information about a Question Time leaders’ special and other debates in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Before we do, I wanted to set out, transparently, some of the principles behind these programmes.
The BBC is for everyone – and it’s a place where everyone’s views are heard, and everyone is treated fairly and with respect. Providing a shared space which brings people together to debate and discuss, whether they agree with each other or not, is a vital part of our mission.
And hearing from the widest possible range of voices is about representing everyone who pays the BBC licence fee. It’s also an obligation under our Charter. Like all of BBC News, we follow the BBC’s editorial guidelines – the special election edition of which has just been published and of course, we comply with Ofcom’s guidelines on political representation during the election period.
I’m often asked how we gauge which political parties should be invited to our debate programmes during the election period. As per the BBC’s election guidelines and in line with Ofcom, we do this via past electoral performance, and parties’ sustained standing in political polling. We take into account the number of candidates a party might be fielding, either across the country or – in the case of the SNP and Plaid Cymru – in Scotland and Wales respectively. Our guidelines set out the broad levels of coverage each of the parties should expect to receive over the campaign period, across the UK and in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. But we don’t judge just on a stop watch – we follow the story, interrogate the claims, scrutinise the policies.
So during the next weeks, we’ll hear from all of the biggest political parties.
We’ll invite them to send us their chosen representatives to debates and to Question Time. Some of our invitations are personal to the party leaders – including the “head to head” format between the two leaders who can viably become the Prime Minister. In other formats, such as the larger debate, leaders are welcome but deputies – that is, senior representatives of the party – are too. There’s no specific requirement for them to be a candidate standing for election – they are there as the voice of that party.
And how about the most important people in the room – the audience? As usual, we’ll ensure our UK studio audiences reflect the broad electoral map of the UK. Our questions will originate from audiences, both those in the room and those watching from home, and we’ll make sure they represent the broad concerns of those audiences, and that they’re fair to all of the political representatives, and aren’t overly focused on any particular party or its manifesto. Participants are never shown the questions in advance – though of course they may have a fair idea of what’s on the minds of voters. Our presenters are asked to ensure that everyone gets a fair hearing, and that we are clear on what’s a promise and what’s an aspiration.
To reflect the importance of these formats during an election period, we’ve moved Question Time into peak-time TV for the duration of the election, starting tonight at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer, and as I said, we will announce our debate details soon.
And, we will also be launching a series of half-hour long Panorama interviews, in which Nick Robinson will be joined by party leaders. They’ll run across the schedule, with greater prominence given to the bigger parties, but time also found for the smaller party leaders whose proposition to the electorate is key to the wider political picture.
Alongside all of our regular news output – on radio, on TV and online, our various formats add up to a big commitment to hosting impartial debate as the electorate comes to its decision. In our polarised world, that commitment is more important than ever, and we will do our very best to fulfil it.