First Time Voters’ Question Time report: Must try harder

4th March, 2010 by Webmaster

Let me be the first to say that I think what the BBC was
trying to do with this programme was admirable. We have a real problem in the
UK with low voting turnout and a younger generation not engaged with democracy.
People find it very difficult to relate to any of the political parties and
often struggle to see how their vote will make any practical difference to
their lives. I want to do something about that problem – I wouldn’t work for
Catch21 if I didn’t. So while I wouldn’t criticise the BBC’s motives, I do
think a lot more thought could have gone into last night’s show, and a
programme that really addressed political issues head on would have been better
for what FTVQT was trying to achieve.

Take a look at Dermot’s performance. I like him, most people
like him, and last night he was clued up on the issues and figures, as well as
handling his panel well – he was informal, but not too matey and deferential.
So where did he go wrong? Well, after the show, everyone around me in the audience
seemed to have the same problems: “We should have had more chances to speak”,
they said, and “we didn’t get enough answers to the actual questions”. I think
that tells you what you need to know. When FTVQT
put young people and politicians face to face on live TV, it had a golden
opportunity for a genuine conversation on political and social issues, on
tangible questions about how the UK and the world should be. It could have been
a real exchange of ideas, but it came up short. Time and again Dermot allowed
the politicians on the panel to ramble on, afraid to cut them off and get the
audience more involved.

It was very frustrating when some of the panellists, like
the impressionist Rory Bremner, argued that “young people are very
politicised… they really care about the issues”. He was absolutely right – we
all have opinions, however disengaged we might be – but I could count the
number of real political issues we discussed last night on one hand. The show
moved very slowly, and only got through four questions in an hour, less than
the normal Question Time format which
people say is “too boring” for a younger audience. In the warm-up, before the
show went on air, we had two fascinating debates; one on the UK giving disaster
aid to poor countries, and one on the possibility of banning Muslim women from
wearing the burqa. After the show had finished, many of the young people in the
audience felt these debates had been more interesting than the questions
included in the show.

It’s no coincidence that these two topics both come up in
the current series of our show Uni-Q.
We have thought long and hard and made a programme which really is about
politicians and young people telling each
other their ideas on subjects that really matter. We give the audience the
chance they need to make themselves heard, and we always set questions that
bring out genuine opinions from our panellists. If the BBC wanted to host a
programme which helped young people decide how to vote, it should have coaxed
out those opinions on the most important topics. Where was the discussion on climate
change, on Afghanistan, on changing the voting system, on equal gay rights?

BBC Three’s show really did mean well, but it could have
been so much better. A fast-paced discussion of what young people really think,
and how their views compare to those of the political parties, would have been
just what first time voters need. But this one-off show, with too much talking on far
too small selection of issues, wasn’t it.

(Photo courtesy Arisian @Flickr)