General Election 2015: Labour accuse BBC of stacking pro-Coalition audience for final debate

The BBC is to screen three back-to-back Question Time-style interviews with Clegg, Cameron and Miliband

David Dimbleby will moderate proceedings (BBC)

Labour accused the BBC of stacking the audience for the final election “debate” with supporters of the Coalition Government.

As part of a deal agreed between the parties and the broadcasters the BBC is to screen three back-to-back Question Time-style interviews with Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Ed Miliband.

The three leaders will at no stage debate each other but will instead face questions from a studio audience for 30 minutes each, moderated by David Dimbleby.

Under the plans put forward by the Corporation 75 per cent of the audience will be made up of supporters of each of the three parties split equally. The remaining 25 per cent will made up of 15 per cent supporters of other parties and 10 per cent who are still to make up their minds.

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But Labour have complained this will put Mr Miliband at a disadvantage as 50 per cent of those taking part will be supporters of either the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats.

They had called for the audience to be representative of the parties’ current poll ratings.

“It does not seem right that when the Lib Dems are polling less than 10 per cent that their supporters should make up 25 per cent of the audience,” said a Labour source.

“That means that half those asking questions will be supporters of the previous Government, which is blatantly not right. We’ve made this point forcefully to the BBC but they don’t seem to be listening.”

Ric Bailey, the BBC’s chief political adviser defended the way they had decided to choose the audience.

“Trying to make sure that we select audiences for political discussion programmes in a fair way is really important to the BBC [and] we put a lot of effort and resources into getting the numbers right,” he wrote in a blog.

“Each party leader faces the same prospect – an audience where one in four supports him, but where the majority does not.”

Addressing the criticism that the audience make up did not address current levels of support Mr Bailey added: “There is no one-size-fits-all way of doing it which everyone agrees about. The formula does not relate to current opinion polls. In our judgment, that would not be fair – we would not be giving each of the leaders the same degree of scrutiny.”

Under the plan for the televised programme, to be screened at eight o’clock this evening, David Cameron will go first, followed by Ed Miliband and finally Nick Clegg.