Who's on the BBC's Question Time this week?

Fiona Bruce introduces Question Time - Credit: BBC

This week’s Question Time comes from Coventry, a city that was once the capital of England – and home to our parliament back in the 1400s. But what will the virtual audience make of this week’s panel of politicians from the past and present?

On the panel is:

Gillian Keegan MP

Keegan is the Tory MP for Chichester and an education minister. This week the politician dismissed the huge coronavirus data bungle as a “teething problem” and the week before struggled to explain the coronavirus rules for the North East. Expect her to make headlines on Thursday evening…

Andy Burnham

Burnham is the mayor of Manchester and was Labour minister in Gordon Brown’s government. He has warned a ‘winter of discontent’ faces the north of England, and has joined forces with other local mayors to call for a rethink of the government’s local lockdown policy.

Michael Portillo

When he’s not appearing on train documentaries, this former Tory MP can be found fighting the corner of the Conservatives on political programmes. He earned the nickname of ‘Sad Man On A Train’ by Andrew Neil on This Week until its axing last year. He stood for Conservative Party leadership in 2001, somehow managing to lose to Iain Duncan Smith.

Minister tries to explain self-isolation rules while defendi

Dame Donna Kinnair

As the chief executive of the nurses’ union, Kinnair is warning that staff are already facing burn out from the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, and fears not enough action is being taken to protect them from the second. She has also warned the “new” hospitals that Boris Johnson likes to keep talking about are effectively “useless” without providing the staff.

Yanis Varoufakis

Varoufakis is a hard-left Greek economist, academic and politician. He was a surprise Remainer voice in the EU referendum despite never cheerleading for what he calls the Brussels “establishment”. Despite this, he claims that Brexit will be a “tiny speck of insignificance” compared to the economic impact of Covid-19.