The National:

GUESTS on BBC Radio Scotland's John Beattie show made their feelings very, very clear about the sad state of Question Time.

The media review on the show featured Anna Burnside, Eamonn O'Neill and Stuart Cosgrove.

They were asked for their thoughts about the controversy over Question Time, after The National revealed that SNP minister Fiona Hyslop's response to a Unionist rant had been cut down to seven seconds.

The BBC were harshly criticised by the guests for the editing decision, and for wider issues in its format and audience selection.

READ MORE: Question Time's Unionist regular will NOT be invited back

Burnside said the BBC's handling of the row had fanned the controversy, and questioned the reasoning of cutting down Hyslop to just seven seconds.

She said: "What has left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouth is that, if her response could be edited out, why wasn’t his initial rant – why was that left in? It looks very bad.

“If you have to take out the response, surely, unless there’s a really strong reason to keep it in … why keep in just the point?"

O'Neill said he was convinced that a producer knew who they were inviting when Mitchell was accepted into the audience.

He explained: “The main question people seem to have is, how come, statistically, he seems to be an incredibly fortunate guy getting on the programme – if he’s out there just now, I’ll give him a tenner to buy a lottery ticket for me, because I know I’m going to win.

“Somewhere along the line, when the BBC has commissioned Mentorn to do this programme in what most people think is a clapped-out format, the BBC’s problematic false balance syndrome has come into play here, which is, we’re going to Motherwell, but what we’re going to try to do is bring in different voices

“And I’m sure – I don’t have proof of this – l but I’d say 10 to a penny, some producer somewhere has got a name with a little asterisk next to it, saying this guy has been on before, he’s a kinda shouty guy that will make good television, it spices things up a bit  nobody will ever admit it, but I bet that’s what’s happened.

“If they go to Motherwell, why are they bussing people in from outside?"

READ MORE: Revealed: Question Time secretly edited SNP answer to Unionist plant

Cosgrove argued that the show should be more representative of the areas it is in.

He said: “Why travel around Britain looking for local dynamics when in actual fact you don’t address those local dynamics? How are audiences actually chosen? Is it fair and is it transparent?

“Flash back to Dundee at the height of the independence referendum, where it became clear that Dundee had a significant Yes majority, and yet, on Question Time, it bore no relationship to that. It actually felt like almost the opposite, as if the audience was being balanced against the value system of the city it was in.

“I thought that, with Lord Forsyth on the panel, there was almost an obligation that they would have dealt with the crisis of post-industrialism in Motherwell, in which he played such a significant part."

Cosgrove, a Sunday National columnist, also said it raised further questions about BBC spending.

Classed as a regional production, Question Time is allocated as a Scottish production, meaning 70% of the production value is allocated there.

Despite this, not anything close to that is spent in Scotland. "That is not fair," he said.

Beattie also revealed the BBC's response to The National's exclusive on his show.

The BBC said: "BBC Question Time had to edit the programme for legal reasons. Ms Hyslop’s response to the audience member was broadcast in full. The subsequent immediate sequence which was a muddled exchange on an issue which could not be broadcast was removed.”

He also repeated an earlier statement about audience selection: "Given the strict rules on data protection, we’re not able to talk about individual cases.

"Although there are no hard and fast rules about how many times someone can appear on a Question Time audience, we want to allow as many people as possible the chance to be part of the programme. So we would not normally allocate a seat to someone if they had appeared recently.

"There is a detailed application process and a request for photographic identification, and every audience member is spoken to individually, sometimes by phone."