Four of the biggest party leaders to debate in York tonight

The leaders of four of the biggest political parties will take questions from an audience in York tonight.

Ahead of the General Election, Fiona Bruce will host a Question Time Leaders’ Special.

Rishi Sunak, Sir Kier Starmer, John Swinney and Sir Ed Davey will all take part in the two hour programme which begins at 8pm.

They will have 30 minutes to answer questions from the live studio audience in York in the established Question Time format.

The order the leaders will appear is Sir Ed Davey, John Swinney, Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak. This has been agreed among the BBC and political parties.

The audience have been asked to submit questions in advance and on the night.

How much of an impact do TV debates have on an election?

Christopher Kirkland is a senior lecturer in politics at York St John University: "Leaders debate tend to have the effect whereby they could lose votes, but are very bad at actually gaining votes, they are not watched by that many people in terms of the overall campaign.

"It's more the sound bites that get recorded in television broadcast, radio broadcasts and newspapers that typically cut through, if anything is going to cut through."

"There is no major shocks, no rabbits coming out of hats at the moment and with that in mind I don't think leaders debates are necessarily going to change things too much in that regard."

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