IT was meant to be the chance for a new broom to sweep clean the much-criticised Question Time but the end of David Dimbleby’s 25 year tenure in the hot seat looks to be the “same old, same old” approach from the BBC which has aroused the anger of politicians in three nations of the UK.

It has emerged that in her first 14 programmes as the new host, Fiona Bruce will leave England just once to chair a show in Motherwell in the homeland of her father, John, who hailed from Hopeman on the Moray coast.

Question Time will not visit Northern Ireland or Wales at all, prompting criticism from the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein – all of whom point out that while it is supposed to be a UK-wide “national” programme, audiences are invariably drawn from around the locations from where it is broadcast which in turn means little chance for people from other nations to question panellists face to face.

Keith Brown, the SNP’s depute leader, said: “This is deeply disappointing. The BBC have a duty to fairly represent the nations of the UK but, assuming this is correct, they appear to be falling well short once again and in doing so are failing audiences in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“It’s appalling that a BBC funded by licence fee payers across the whole UK should not address the interests of them all in fair measure.

“I genuinely hoped that the new chair would mean new rules – taking account of the concerns we have raised about fairness and representation – but we are seeing no evidence of this to date.”

Ben Lake MP, Plaid Cymru’s Culture and Media spokesperson, said: “Sadly we cannot expect anything less from a media that struggles represent anything outside the M25.

“This was an opportunity for a change of direction, but the media establishment continues to serve up the same.

“The London-centric media continue to ignore the voices of the nations. If the BBC is to be a national broadcaster, it must represent all of the nations.”

A spokesperson for Sinn Fein said: “This is no surprise to us. If you were to judge by the population, we would get one in every 18 shows but last year we got just one.

“It is just another example of how the media establishment in common with the Westminster Establishment disregards and disrespects the people of the North and Ireland as a whole.”

BBC sources ay that Question Time will be in all four Nations at an ‘appropriate level’ before the end of the current run in July.

Fiona Bruce will start as host on January 10 in Islington, London. The locations between then and April 11 are Derby, Winchester, Lincoln, Motherwell, Chester, Aylesbury, London, Dudley, Thetford, Frome, Harrogate, Epsom and Manchester. The geographical spread may be a main reason why SNP MPs and MSPs have only been on the Question Time panel seven times in past 12 months despite the party being the third largest in the House of Commons and the second largest in the UK in terms of number of members.

Ukip, by contrast, has been represented on a quarter of all programmes between 2010 and 2017. The Sunday National has reported that the SNP had called for a fairer proportion of airtime for the party on the BBC’s flagship programme Question Time in the wake of the announcement that Fiona Bruce is to take over.

A BBC spokesperson said: “Question Time visits every part of the UK and the number of visits to each location is based on population share.”