The panel line up for last nights BBC TV Question Time included Councillor Suzanne Evans, a UKIP Councillor from Merton in Surrey who is also their spokesperson for Communities. Her only other qualification for appearing is that next year she will be one of the UKIP candidates for the 2015 General Election, assuming that she and the party don’t change their plans (a year is a long time in Politics). The graphic above was produced by a blogger called Dave Evans who tweets under @soylentish Assuming his data is correct Suzanne’s appearance was the 22nd in the last 4 years by UKIP. If there have been 160 shows in that time (which would be consistent with the Labour appearances) that would mean that UKIP are invited to 14% of the shows and the Greens to a mere 6% of shows, whilst Respect are close behind on 4%. As the graphic shows these figures do not necessarily correlate to the electoral support or impact of the parties.

One of the missing elements from the graphic is the number of MEPs that each party sends to Strasbourg. The UK sends 73 MEPs in total and of these there are 10 UKIP, 26 Conservative, 11 Lib Dem, 13 Labour, 2 SNP and 2 Green. The remaining 8 are from parties sending only 1 person to the Parliament. A second missing element is the number of Independent Councillors and MPs along with the breakdown of Police and Crime Commissioners. Although there are fewer PCCs across the country the split between the parties and Independents was more or less one third each for Conservative, Labour and Independents. Yet we rarely see any of the PCCs on Question time, even though their budget and geography is far in excess of all MPs and most Council Leaders. There are also more Independent Councillors than UKIP or Green Councillors and several MPs in recent years who have been elected as Independents, in addition to those who are asked to leave their parties from time to time.

It is clear that there cannot be an exact science applied to the selection for this panel, yet it is one of the few places where people from a range of different parties and political positions can be seen to discuss a range of issues of the audiences choosing, rather than the debates in Council Chambers and in Parliament itself. I am certain I am not alone in wishing to see more of the members of the Green Party on the panel, and certainly to see more of the various Police and Crime Commissioners who may have been elected on low turnouts, but neverless represent far more individual votes than any of our MPs including the front bench of the Government.

At the end of last nights show we were told that Nigel Farage will be on the panel next week and there won’t be any PCCs or Green party representative. Perhaps we could ask the producers to look at their criteria for the shows that take place after the European elections, whatever the outcome of those votes.