BBC Question Time returns once again with an hour of topical debate in what has been another eventful week in politics.

Fiona Bruce will once again put questions to a panel of politicians and guests on the BBC’s flagship political show from a virtual audience. 

The UK continues to vaccinate on a large scale with negotiations underway to try and secure so-called ‘variant vaccines’. The Prime Minister was married over the weekend in secret and the Health Secretary did not rule out keeping guidance on face masks and working from home in place past June 21 in a bid to allow the majority of coronavirus restrictions to be lifted. In Scotland, many regions stayed in Level Two despite calls from the Opposition to stick to the route map out of lockdown. 

Here’s who’s on BBC Question Time tonight and what viewers can expect. 

Lucy Frazer

The Solicitor General for England and Wales will appear as the UK Government’s representative on BBC Question time this evening. The former Prisons Minister has been an MP for South East Cambridgeshire since 2015. Frazer supported Remain in the 2016 EU Referendum. She made headlines in 2018 when she put forward a Bill to Parliament making ‘upskirting’ an offence in England and Wales, saying at the time  “We will ensure this Bill becomes law as soon as possible to protect more victims and properly punish offenders.

One of her last acts as Prison Minister was to expand kitchen courses in prisons in a bid to cut reoffending. 

She sparked controversy in 2015 in her maiden speech after she laughed about how Oliver Cromwell defeated the Scots at Dunbar and sent them as "slaves to the colonies"

During her speech, she talked about her constituency's chequered and colourful political past.

She said: "It is the home of Oliver Cromwell who defeated the Scots at Dunbar, incorporated Scotland into his Protectorate and transported the Scots as slaves to the colonies. "

Frazer then waited until the laughing, and 'here, heres' abated before adding: "Now there is an answer to the West Lothian question - but not one that of course I would recommend."

She then issued an apology for the remarks

READ MORE: Tory apologises over 'joke' about turning Scots into 'slaves'

While Frazer votes mainly with those in her party, she has differed her vote on investigations into the Iraq War as well as for allowing terminally ill people to be given assistance to end their life, a vote which mainly of her fellow Conservatives opposed. She has voted consistently against an elected House of Lords, as well as voting for replacing Trident with a new nuclear weapons system. 

Peter Kyle

Representing Labour on the BBC show is Peter Kyle, the Shadow Schools Minister who was appointed in a reshuffle of the Labour front bench in May this year. The former overseas aid worker has been an MP for Hove since 2015. Kyle was outspoken over Government plans to hand a senior trade role to former Australian PM Tony Abbott saying ministers “don’t even pretend not to embrace bigots anymore”. 

The MP was also outspoken about Jeremy Corbyn’s apology following the devastating defeat in 2019 dubbing the apology from the former Labour leader to MPs as a ‘generalised apology’ He said: “It wasn’t any more heartfelt, it wasn’t a direct apology to the group. It was a generalised apology for the situation that he appears to have found himself in.”

Kyle was praised for his Twitter thread in which he described living with dyslexia. The MP has made his struggles with dyslexia known saying when he was aged 30, his reading and comprehension age was estimated at eight years and three months.  said he struggles with some words more than others, such as “loose” and “lose” which required him to keep a reminder on his desk. He tweeted: “I want to say something about living with acute dyslexia because Twitter can be a pretty unforgiving place for people with unseen challenges,” he tweeted.

READ MORE: Opinion: We need to be more open about our conditions or nothing will change

“What’s it like? Imagine a car where the gearbox (my eyes) isn’t connected properly to the engine (brain).

“Sometimes words are just shapes… I can see the shape but it simply has no meaning.”

He campaigned for Remain during the EU referendum and has backed Labour on the majority of votes in the Commons. Last year Kyle was appointed a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel. 

Anthony Costello 

The Paediatrician and Professor for Global Health and Sustainable Development at UCL will also be on the BBC Question Time panel. Costello was a former WHO director for maternal, child and adolescent health and is a member of Independent Sage. The expert will be able to offer comment and insight into the handling of the Covid-19 crisis.  

In March this year, the expert said that Covid-19  cannot be eradicated and will be with us for “a long time” but efforts can be made to “eliminate” it, “You cannot eradicate a virus, we’ve been absolutely clear about that from day one, a virus like this is going to be with us for a long time, but you can try to eliminate it.

“By that, we mean that you’re going to use public health measures and population immunity produced either by a vaccine or by natural infection which will eventually suppress community transmission.”

“That doesn’t mean that you’re always going to be successful, there will be outbreaks as there have been in many of the Asian states.”

READ MORE: Expert says UK could see '40,000 deaths' in first wave of coronavirus outbreak

“Suppression has worked in all the countries that have tried it or attempted it, we never did that.

He also stressed the need for independent public health experts and integration of primary care and services such as NHS 111.

In June 2020 he was one of 27 medical and scientific experts who signed a letter to The Guardian warning many more Britons may die if the UK Government is without solutions to “some of the structural problems that have made implementing an effective response so difficult” and also led calls for teachers and nursery workers to be vaccinated as a priority saying: “They are the only group that I know of who will spread this amongst age groups because all the others will not be in contact with children.

Professor Costello has been critical of the UK Government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis with the former World Health Organisation director saying in April 2020 that the authorities had been “too slow” to react. In November 2020 he also said: “Failure to reform and improve the performance of the find, test, trace and isolate system, will mean earlier and more frequent circuit breakers and lockdowns.”

Jenni Murray

The broadcaster Jenni Murray will also sit on the BBC Question Time panel and will be well versed in the format of Question Time having previously presented Newsnight.

Dame Jenni Murray also hosted Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 and the Today programme. She was the longest-serving presenter of Woman’s Hour in the show’s 74-year history, hosting for 33 years. 

On leaving the show she said: “I’ve spent nearly half my life with Woman’s Hour and it’s been a privilege ‎and delight to inform, educate and entertain a loyal and growing audience of women and men. “Saying goodbye will be very hard to do, but it’s time to move on.”

READ MORE: Jenni Murray leaves Woman's Hour after 33 years

She has written for The Guardian, Express and the Daily Mail. Murray also took part in ITV’s The Real Full Monty on Ice. She told of her battle with obesity in Fat Cow, Fat Chance, in which she also examined the science and psychology of size.

She sparked controversy in 2017 by suggesting men who have undergone sex change operations are not “real women”. At the time, Murray questioned whether someone who has enjoyed the privileges of growing up as a man could really be a woman.

Heather McGregor 

The Executive Dean of the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt will complete the BBC Question Time panel. The former CEO at Taylor Bennett is perhaps best known for her time with the Financial Times, writing the Mrs Moneypenny column for 17 years. which ran in the FT from 1999 to 2016.

This year, she was behind the Panmure House Prize will award $75,000 to promote and encourage pioneering research and radical innovation saying: : “The aim of the Prize is central to the mission of Panmure House, the final remaining home of globally renowned economist and philosopher, Adam Smith.

“Adam Smith used to bring the finest minds of the day together in Panmure House to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems. We wish to carry on his legacy through inviting the finest minds today to try and identify how best to develop long term funding, which will enable radical innovation.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, she told the Future Work podcast that “The future of work will be unbelievably flexible. We will work in different ways and in different places. It will not be one continual line of employment.”

BBC Question Time airs on BBC One at 10:45pm