Question Time adds student voice

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Student Suzanne Burlton challenges Labour's Andy Burnham over the way the government markets universities

Student Suzanne Burlton was the audience favourite and won high praise from her fellow panellists on BBC 1's Question Time last night.

The 18 year old won a competition to represent the views of young people on a special Schools programme.

Fellow panellist and Conservative front bencher, Jeremy Hunt even referred to her as "a future prime minister".

"I managed to say most things I wanted to say," said the school leaver from North London.

She admitted to nerves before her TV appearance in front of a live audience.

A team of students helped produce Schools Question Time

But the 18-year-old spoke confidently on British troops in Afghanistan, university education, alcohol-related deaths, liberty versus security for British citizens, and the recent allegations of phone bugging by newspaper journalists.

"I thought she was fantastic," said Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, who sat next to Suzanne on the panel. "Even when David came to her last, she had a unique point to add."

Director of Liberty Shami Chakrabarti was also very impressed and called her a "star".

Suzanne says she would like to pursue a career in politics or broadcasting after university. "I hope one day I'll be back as a panellist... check back in 20 years time!"

'Tough questions'

The audience consisted of young people aged between 16 and 25 and at least 75% of them will be first-time votes at the next general election.

Debates were lively and lots of hands shot-up during the programme for the chance to take-up points made by fellow audience members as well as panellists.

Panel member Andy Burnham MP said he thought the audience "engaged in a really positive way" and that they had asked some "tough questions".

"It's a myth that young people are not interested in politics," he added, "we just have to do our politics a bit differently."

Question Time chairman David Dimbleby said he would like to see young people get more involved in political debate, perhaps with Question Time's annual "Schools" programme becoming in some way "part of mainstream broadcasting".

Last night's programme was broadcast on BBC Three as well as BBC One.

Selection process

Suzanne hopes to be back again as a panellist in future

Suzanne won her place on the panel by taking part in a UK-wide competition called 'peoples' panellist' in which young people aged between 18 and 21 submitted mobile video clips of themselves to the BBC website, explaining why they wanted to go head-to-head with the politicians on Question Time.

Out of 119 applicants, five finalists were asked to audition in Sunderland on Thursday 18th June 2009, with David Dimbleby, in a "mock" filmed edition of Question Time.

This film was published on the Question Time website and on YouTube and comments from the public were taken into account to help select the winner to appear on the programme from Salford.

The programme was produced by a team of students who were nominated as winners of the 2009 Schools Question Time challenge and have worked alongside the normal production team to produce this event.

The challenge

Schools Question Time is a national initiative from Parliament's Education Service, the Institute for Citizenship and the BBC.

It aims to help secondary school pupils learn about citizenship, contribute to stimulating political discussions, improve their speaking and listening skills and engage with members of the community.

The Schools Question Time Challenge 2010 will launch in September 2009, with new resources for an election year giving more young people than ever the opportunity to debate and interact with politics.

Schools Question Time 2009 was broadcast live on BBC Three at 8pm on Thursday 9 July and then repeated at the usual time of 10.35pm on BBC One.