THE SNP have pledged to “burst the BBC’s Westminster bubble” as figures were revealed on the party’s appearance numbers in March.

SNP depute leader Keith Brown said the BBC had been “rumbled”, with five SNP appearances on Newsnight coming after our report that out of 66 politicians invited on the show in February, not one was from Scotland’s largest party – which had received no invitations from producers.

Research by The National found that the SNP, which has 35 seats in the Commons, appeared 15 times on the BBC’s major political shows across the month of March.

That compared to 130 appearances for the Tories, 69 for Labour, 11 for the newly formed Independent Group of 11 MPs and five for the LibDems.

Brown said: “The BBC has been rumbled and is desperately trying to cover its tracks.

“The latest figures speak for themselves. All five SNP guest slots in March fall after The National exposed Newsnight for not featuring a single SNP politician in the entirety of February.

“These flagship BBC political programmes have been caught out under-representing the SNP, and whilst there’s been an improvement in March we’re going to keep the pressure on BBC bosses in London.

“We’ll not stand by and allow Scotland’s voice to be ignored by the BBC – and we’re determined to closely monitor and call out instances where Scotland is ignored, misrepresented or disrespected.

“The continuing underrepresentation of the SNP from flagship programmes such as Politics Live and Newsnight is merely one example of a failure by the BBC to represent all audiences in the UK in equal measures.

“The BBC cannot be allowed to continue producing network news and current affairs reports through a London-centric prism. We’re determined to burst the BBC’s Westminster bubble.”

Across Victoria Derbyshire, Politics Live, Newsnight, Question Time and The Andrew Marr Show, the SNP filled 15 of 234 guest slots taken up by politicians – just over 6%.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We are committed to providing fair representation for all political parties across our programming.”