Time to revisit BBC Question Time’s political balance… 10 days ago, you may recall, Andrew Hinton’s Mindrobber blog questioned the omission of a Lib Dem representative from the panel, following on from a Lib Dem Voice thread. Andrew crunched some figures, which suggested parity between the Tory and Labour parties, with a lower number of Lib Dem panellists.
This seemed to lend some reasonable plausiblity to the BBC’s defence that “The programmes try to achieve balance over a reasonable period and certainly have a firm commitment to political balance over their series as a whole.” It’s worth noting, however, that party election broadcasts – a good benchmark against which to judge political balance – are allocated on a 5:5:4 ratio between Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem. On this basis, Lib Dems are under-represented on QT.
But the omission of a Lib Dem wasn’t LDV’s main whinge – our gripe concerned the inclusion, for the fourth week in succession, of an unofficial Conservative representative on the panel alongside the official Tory representative. So we took a second look at the data.
Normally, when you measure political balance, you don’t just consider MPs and peers from a party, but also include its other declared supporters. So when measuring QT’s political balance, it is only reasonable to include in each party’s totals the other declared supporters of that party, particularly when these figures include people such as a former senior employee of a party or a party’s prospective general election candidate.
On the basis of the recognised 5:5:4 ratio, you would expect a split between Tories, Labour and Lib Dems of roughly 36%/36%/29%. But is that what we found? Nope. 
As you can see from the graph, over 40% of QT panellists are Tories, either official or unofficial, compared with a little more than 20% for the Lib Dems.
Even if you disagree with our notion of an appropriate level of Lib Dem representation, it is hard to see how the BBC can justify such a sustained bias in favour of the Tories and against Labour.
We’ve emailed the BBC with the link to this story, and will look forward to seeing whether we get anything more than a standard response.
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53 Comments
How very interesting…
On what basis is party affiliation decided? For example, does being a right-wing columnist get one included as a Tory? Similarly for left-wing papers? And if so, therein might lie one of the problems for Lib Dems. I’d argue that while Sarah Sands and Amanda Platell are right-wing, they aren’t “unofficial Conservative spokespeople” – they are right-wing political observers who may be in agreement with the Tories at some point, but not at others. I’d certainly like to know how one qualifies for inclusion – from earlier statements it seems to be like the bar for being considered a Tory, and to some extent a Labour spokesperson, is much lower than for the Lib Dems.
Amanda Platell, for example, is a former senior Conservative Party employee who makes no bones about still being a supporter of them.
I think therefore it is quite reasonable to classify her in the “Conservative” column just as, say, Olly Grender – if she ever appeared on Question Time – would reasonably be put in the Lib Dem column, being a former senior party staff member too.
Having worked on QT in a technical role some years ago I bit my tongue when in the room at an editorial meeting where all nodded in agreement at the statement “I suppose we had better have a f****** Liberal on that week, or else they will only complain” by a very senior member of the team.
The recent observations aren’t new, but the pressure needs to be maintained.
But Duncan, I thought the beeb was a hotbed of Liberal bias?
* innocent expression *
QT has been made by various production companies in recent years. Mentorn are the present company. The key people for many years were George Carey (of Barraclough Carey, then Mentorn Barraclough Carey), who was founding editor of Newsnight and George Entwistle at the BBC, who was also a founding editor at Newsnight (I started my techie carrier at BBC News at the birth of Newsnight). It is arms length bias…
I was pretty shocked the other week when there was a Tory MP and a Tory PPC on and no Lib Dem at all.
Since they went to 5 panalists a week we seemed to be getting someone on every week apart from in Scottish, welsh etc places where Nationlists take up extra places on the panel. However recently this no longer seems to be the case and I think the BBC should explain why.
Gosh, Duncan, I don’t remember you at the birth of Newsnight – I worked it too, in 1978 with a certain Andrew Neil… those were the days! I was an AFM, and my husband Tim a video engineer (we met on Playschool). QT this week is in Watford, and we’ve been told that the audience will reflect the political position at the last election. To our knowledge, only five local LDs have had their applications accepted. (Watford is our third target from Labour nationally, and I only need 1148 votes to win next time). They haven’t replied to my application, and I understand that is normal for current ppcs in the area.
There’s a ridiculous, but difficult to ignore, little voice in the back of my head saying “let’s picket the next one!”
GAAA!!! STOP THIS AT ONCE!!!
Are we determined to land ourselves a reputation for being a bunch of irredeemable whiners? If we want to appear more on Question Time, then we’ve got to be a bit less anodyne. Take a leaf out of my book! I mean could somebody please tell me who was the last Lib Dem on QT who really packed a punch? Chris Huhne wasn’t too bad in recent times, but after that I’m struggling a bit. Julia Goldsworthy made a huge impact but for all the wrong reasons. Come on guys. Don’t follow. Lead.
QT this week is in Watford, and we’ve been told that the audience will reflect the political position at the last election. To our knowledge, only five local LDs have had their applications accepted.
Sal, when I attended QT at Cambridge before Christmas, I was expecting to see half the local party there. In fact, there was no-one I recognised (bear in mind that I’m fairly new to libdemmery). But I didn’t read anything sinister into that. Before you may join the audience, they ring you up to check that you’ve potentially got something interesting to contribute. Could it be that apart from those five Lib Dems, the remainder of the Watford party is just too boring? I merely throw that out as a thought experiment!
This is in our hands.
Laurence is absolutely correct in it is quality not quantity that rules the programme.
Lib dems of stature are not thick on the ground but have to be catered for.
Also bear in mind that the Chairman can show a great deal of bias, generally left of centre, which is why when he is away the new chairman is diligent in not showing bias for the very short period of his tenure – unfortunately Ed Sturton was quickly bundled away for JD to retain his sinecure.
We all know that the BBC is left leaning so it is no surprise to me that this article does not mention when TWO labour leaning people are on the panel.
Lib Dems should stop whining and get a decent line up of quality candidates.
Nice to see that the Lib Dems dubious use of bar charts continues apace.
Maybe QT should ascribe slots according to the number of MPs each party has. By that count, Lib Dems are massively OVERrepresented on QT 🙂
But do you really think that, with consistently less than 20% in the polls over the last year or so, there should be on average more than one Lib Dem on the QT pannel each week?
Lib Dems are indeed massively overrepresented. If Question Time select guests on the basis of visibility in political life, media coverage or party ratings in the polls, the Conservatives win every time over Labour. All these selection methods would also mean that the Lib Dem appearances should be kept to a minimum.
Your complaints have no basis whatsoever.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
“Also bear in mind that the Chairman can show a great deal of bias, generally left of centre”
Are you suggesting that Dimblbore or is left of centre?
Dimbleby (David) is simply superb. Any criticism of him is way off the mark. No, I’m afraid our passing Tories have it exactly right. We are massively over-represented on Question Time. I’m going to write to the BBC straight away and demand that we appear much less on the programme. Or at least until we stop this whining, at any rate . . .
The 5:5:4 ratio is only one way that Mentorn could apportion QT panelists. 16% in national polling … 14% of Britain’s MEPs … 12.5% of the Scottish Parliament … 10% of the Commons. Maybe 15% of panelists is more appropriate?
They certainly never called me before I got tickets to be in the audience and they selected my question too. Mind you, I didn’t announce my position in the local party when I rang up for tickets!
I don’t know about the rights and wrongs of who should be on the panel, but Platell, Zac Goldsmith etc are incredibly dull. We do have to be more interesting, but equally, QT would be better to have more diverse and interesting guests- I would much rather have a Hitchens (either!), Chakarabati, Tariq Ali etc then another Tory non-entity.
There should be more liberals, simply because it would make the panel more diverse and the discussion more interesting, but it should also have more interesting liberals. These requests are not mutually exclusive.
Simon, if you are on for diversity then I don’t think that adding more Lib Dems is going to help much. If you are really chasing diversity you would have to bite the bullet and chase some of the fringe parties (anarchists, communists, BNP; that sort of thing), plus maybe a few more bishops / mullahs (mad or otherwise) / overseas politicians.
Of course if, by diversity, you mean getting your point of view a greater airing then by all means lobby for more Lib Dems, but that isn’t a very objective standpoint.
I would actually like to see more diverse views – my dream panel would be one representative of all 3 main parties (imho they should be going for representing a range of views rather than mirroring the current political status quo, which means that there should be a labourite, a tory and a liberal on each panel, to ensure a range of views and a decent discussion), plus two ‘others’ who represent genuinely different views.
I don’t want to give the BNP that legitimacy, but there’s no good reason not to have UKIP, or the Greens, or representatives of think tanks and campaigns – maybe more people from the charitable sector e.g. the British red cross, who do an enormously diverse range of work in this country as well as abroad. There are plenty of these that represent genuinely different views to the parties (like that crackpot Douglas Murray guy they have on there sometimes), and campaigners from particular areas, including muslim groups – possibly at the same time as Douglas Murray, that would be fun! As for overseas politicians, it would be interesting, but surely most of them wouldn’t particularly want to come – not much opportunity to expose themselves to their own electorates.
in terms of overseas, I was particularly thinking of European politicians (and commisioners, for that matter, although most of them have political backgrounds). Given the influence of European politics on domestic lawmaking I think it would be extremely interesting (and useful) to have such people make their case on QT.
OK, I get you – well in that case, definitely agreed. EU politicians keep far too low a profile – which is partly why its so easy to portray them as power-grabbing bureaucrats.
of course it may just reinforce people’s opinion of them as power grabbing bureaucrats :-), but it would start to address the democratic deficit that is, IMHO, the largest single problem with the way the EU runs currently.
Hmmm, the most recent figures from UK Polling Report (approvingly linked to from this place recently) lists Con 40, Lab 31 Lib 17.
So if QT are going by voting intention, then all three major parties are over-represented.
<Arnie voice>STOP WHINING<Arnie voice>
(Clearly there should be a closing tag there – everyone for the rest of this thread will now be speaking in an Arnie voice…)
I’m still unclear as to what actually qualified someone to be placed in a particular column. It seems to me to be quite subjective. Yes, Platell may be happy to describe herself as a ‘Conservative’. But if she isn’t an MP or on the party payroll, then she is in a different position entirely to, say, Ed Vaizey. Now, you’d still want a balance between right-wing and left-wing voices on the panel – but that is different to there being a ‘Tory’ bias. You can’t just say someone is a Conservative representative on the panel because you don’t like them. And also, might it be that there are more ‘left-wing’ voices on the panel overall, but trying to make a distinction between Labour and Lib Dem representatives muddies this somewhat?
Caption to the bar chart: Only Labour can beat Tories here! 😉
19- No, I mean genuine diversity, and that means having a liberal voice, as well as a social democratic and a conservative one. And, as you suggest, European voices, Douglas Murray, campaigners, anarchists, libertarians, greens, socialists etc etc
Caption to the bar chart: Only Labour can beat Tories here!
Well of course at the national level, that is the caption, or vice versa. It’s nothing short of astonishing to me that we persist with these moronic bar charts.
Looking at the numbers again, it seems that not only are all three parties overrepresented compared to current voting intentions, it is the Tories, I’m afraid, who are most proportionately represented compared to current voting intention, and the Lib Dems who are the most disproportionately represented – in our favour!
This week’s Question Time from Watford was meant to have Baroness Shirley Williams on the panel. She has now been replaced by that well-known liberal Melanie Phillips!
I love the Party dearly but I did nearly fall of my chair laughing when I saw this issue had manifested its self as a dodgy bar chart.
We can’t just moan, we need to give the BBC alternative names. I suggest we get behind the reigning and previous LD bloggers of the Year. They both have things to say and might just dare to say it in an interesting manner. We can’t expect a greater number of slots for hacks.
Gah! Was looking forward to Shirley butting heads with Portillo and the rest. I guess if she’s had to pull out then they had to replace her, but still, that’s annoying.
OTOH, we did have two distinct liberal voices last week, I know Shami isn’t a Lib Dem but I look at it from a less partizan way and want to make sure there’s a balance of opinion on the panel, and if everyone there is pro-“war on terror” and the associated stuff it’s bad, but if we’ve got at least one and preferably two liberal/libertarian voices then at least there’s someone speaking for me in some way.
Points above about a lack of non-politico liberal speakers of celebs they could get on are to an extent relevent, could we not try to get more people like Sandi Toksvig or even Brian Eno on? It’s not like we’re not lacking in commentators or otherwise informed types that are broadly “on our side”, that we haven’t got enough is as much our failing as it is anyone else’s.
Mat (and others): the point isn’t so much what we try to do, it’s what the BBC is willing to accept.
“if we’ve got at least one and preferably two liberal/libertarian”
That does quite nicely illustrate the problem though. For example David Starkey might hit some of the libertarian buttons but isn’t really a liberal (though he is very informed, entertaining and would make a superb QT panelist IMO).
It is pretty easy to characterise people as left & right. Less easy to characterise them as liberal/authoritarian.
This week’s Question Time from Watford was meant to have Baroness Shirley Williams on the panel. She has now been replaced by that well-known liberal Melanie Phillips!
I’d quite happily never see Baroness Williams on the box again, following her disgraceful opening remarks last time around.
What did she say? I’m sure there are other liberals who hate Shirley AND Shami Chakrabarti – though I’m not sure they’ll be able to form an SAO 🙂
But won’t this help the Lib Dems, now that Nick Clegg is going to turn them into Tories ?
I would have thought you would be in favour of this ?
She said that conferring a knighthood upon Salman Rushdie was a “mistake.” Not a mistake because his writings are utterly impenetrable (which would have been one thing), but a mistake because the award might be offensive to Muslims.
I just can’t help wondering why this really matters; as only Tories and bores (is the ‘and’ necessary?) seem to watch QT, it’s quite understandable that the makers reflect the opinions of their viewing audience. In more than 30 years canvassing, no one has ever mentioned QT to me on the doorstep. Time to take off your anoracs and get on doorsteping.
Have any of you realised that your message on the blogosphere lose cogency the longer it goes on?
Tonight I listed to the Moral Maze and realise this is the first time that the panel and chairman do not understand the message from the Archbishop and the issue on hand.
The Party Political System is defunct and needs to be replaced – but we are not mature enough to handle it and have no answers as yet.
Could the Archbishop be the first of the Wise Men to raise their head above the parapet????
SalB@8
It will be interesting to see if the makeup of the panel and the audience reflects the political strength of Lib Dems in Watford. The purpose of moving QT around is to reflect different views in different areas, after all.
It didn’t when they went to Oxford… http://bridgetfox.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/question-time/
At the risk of dragging this issue beyond it’s utility. No one seems to have mentioned the other bias on QT namely Dimblebores selection of speakers within the panels. He invariably leaves the Lib Dem speaker last and has frequently not asked them to speak at all. As for his personal bias I remember how he quickly changed the subject when someone raised the question of Camerons Bullingdon club group photo.He was of course a member of this bunch of yobs himself.
Laurence Boyce : the voice of reason….yet again.
Hey, thanks Sal, I really appreciate that! But if you don’t reveal your identity, then I won’t be able to put a cheque in the post. 🙂
Au contraire Roger, I would say that it is the Conservatives who are going to be in some trouble for the medium to long term. Our job is therefore to capitalise on their decline. It does mean, however, that as a party we need to tack to the right. Not sure everyone quite gets this yet.
Laurence? Define “left”. Then define “right” Then explain how some mainstream commentators think we’re extremely left wing and others think we’re too right wing, sometimes at the same time?
Left and Right in economic terms is a fairly meaningless and amorphous concept anyway, especially in todays world, much better to talk about liberal policies around choice, freedom and markets and let people accept the policies for what they are.
OK, this is a bit wafflely, but . . .
There are a number of ways of defining left and right, the overall concept being a summation of them all I suppose. But the economic dimension remains key, and always will in my view. So the simplest and crudest scheme would be to define the economic left-right spectrum in terms of tax levied as a percentage of GDP. I am fairly clear in my mind that as a party we should be indicating a direction of travel along this line to the right. We should be clearly stating that the destination point for Liberal Democrats should be a low tax, small state, economy.
But it can’t be accomplished overnight. This is what ought to distinguish us from the Conservatives. There are plenty in that party who wish to slash taxation to a bare minimum straight away. The result is that many would find themselves in the deep end, and some would drown. That’s why they’re called the nasty party. By contrast, we should not be forcing the pace of change unduly. Broadly speaking, we will move gradually towards a low tax economy, as and when the country is ready for it.
We will, of course, reject social conservatism utterly. Why anyone in their right mind would want to set money free, but not people free . . .
The percentage of GDP garnered in tax (somewhere between 40 and 45%) has barely changed for the last several decades, Lawrence, it’s just who gets taxed that varies. Yes, it’s slightly up at the moment, but in the grand scheme of things “low tax” and “high tax” are and have always been mostly posturing from the main two political parties.
Hmm, that’s interesting – I didn’t know that. Well maybe we should be different from the two main political parties, and genuinely head for a low(er) tax economy! But in the abstract, is Nick Clegg not in fact heeding my advice? Is he not tacking to the right with the occasional shimmy to the left? It feels a bit like that . . .
“maybe we should be different from the two main political parties”
That would be wonderful: a truly different political party. I’m not holding my breath for it to happen, though 😉
I could have sworn I read something just the other week that the average tax burden under Maggie was ~35%. Don’t recall where, though.
@sanbikiniwossname “average tax burden” is hard to define. Given income tax rates and NI, 35% of income may be about right, but she also nearly doubled VAT to 15% from 8% and was a strong believer in indirect taxation.
But Jennie’s right, the amount taken as a %age of GDP (which is the only sane measure) has creeped up slightly under Labour but not that much, its remained in the low 40% range for ages.
Laurence is right, ideally we’d have a small state without a large tax burden, and tere are undoubtedly savings that could be made. But Thatcher didn’t manage it, Major didn’t manage it and Blair didn’t manage it. Brown isn’t bothering from what I can see.
It’s who, how and what is taxed that really matters, combined with making sure money isn’t being wasted. Once you’ve got that right, then you can look to reduce the burden, the current centralised system is undoubtedly horribly wrong, so that would need to be the top priority. In my oh-so-very-humble opinion, anyway.