By Ric Bailey Executive Editor, Question Time

In response, Question Time Executive Editor Ric Bailey explains how the programme's guidelines affect the representation of political parties on the programme.

To make sure that Question Time treats all political parties fairly and appropriately, it operates under specific guidelines regarding the selection of panellists who are formally representing their party.

These are designed to make sure that across each series, parties are represented in a way that reflects the level of electoral support they attract.

Bearing in mind that Question Time is a UK wide programme, this is how the line is drawn between those parties which are represented and those which aren't.

Any political party which has demonstrated sufficient electoral support in a national election will normally get some level of representation across each series of Question Time.

In other words, parties which have seats in Westminster, the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the NI Assembly (when appropriate).

So, as well as the three main UK parties, that means the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, the Greens, UKIP, the Scottish Socialists, Respect, plus the Northern Ireland parties, will all be on Question Time, to a greater or lesser extent.

A party which has no representation at a national level, but has a small number of council seats in local government, would fall well short of this threshhold.

Question Time has no specific policy on any one political party.

But taking the criteria above, at present, the BNP has not demonstrated that it has sufficient electoral support to justify representation on the panel.

However, we keep these guidelines under constant review to make sure they are still appropriate to the political context.

If, for instance, there was real evidence that a party was showing a significant upsurge in support in between elections, then we would have to take a judgement on that.

We are not in that situation at the moment and have no plans to invite the leader of the BNP onto Question Time.