The Middlesbrough panel

Question Time, the BBC's premier political debate programme comes from Middlesbrough on Thursday 18 February.

The panel includes the veteran Labour politician Lord Hattersley, the former deputy governor of a province of occupied Iraq and prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate Rory Stewart, the Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone, the economist and former head of policy at the Institute of Directors Ruth Lea and the actor and actor Tom Conti.

ROY HATTERSLEY

Baron Hattersley was the deputy leader of the Labour Party from 1983-1992 and is now a life peer.

He became MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook in 1964 - a seat he was to hold for the next eight general elections.

While serving as deputy leader he was also shadow chancellor until 1987, when he moved back to shadow home affairs, a position he held until the 1992 election.

In 2003 he accused Tony Blair of losing touch with the party and advised him to stand down after the 2005 election in favour of Gordon Brown.

However, he has since been critical of Brown saying: "Mr Brown has not behaved like the high-minded radical that his supporters, among whom I numbered, expected him to be."

RORY STEWART

Rory Stewart is the prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate for Penrith and the Border in Cumbria.

Born in Hong Kong, he grew up in Malaysia and served briefly as an officer in the British Army, studied history and politics at Oxford University and then joined the British Diplomatic Service. He worked in the British Embassy in Indonesia and then, in the wake of the Kosovo campaign, as the British Representative in Montenegro.

In 2000 he took two years off and began walking from Turkey to Bangladesh. He covered 6000 miles on foot alone across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal.

In 2003, he became the coalition deputy governor of Maysan and Dhi Qar, two provinces in the Marsh Arab region of Southern Iraq, and later wrote a book about the experience called The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq.

In 2004, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire. He lived in Kabul from 2006-2008 and founded the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which is investing in the regeneration of the historic commercial centre of Kabul.

He was appointed to a professorial chair at Harvard University as the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights at the beginning of 2009 and became Director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

He was elected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate by an open-primary meeting (open to all registered voters, regardless of party) in October 2009.

LYNNE FEATHERSTONE MP

Lynne Featherstone is the Liberal Democrat youth and equalities spokesman and MP for Hornsey & Wood Green.

Her various roles after leaving university included working as a director of the family firm and running her own design company.

She entered politics as a councillor on Haringey Council in 1998, and served on the London Assembly for five years before being elected as MP for Hornsey and Wood Green in 2005.

It was her third attempt at the parliamentary seat, in which she grew up.

This week Featherstone was named the most attractive MP in a survey by Sky News. Her response: "For a woman who stopped counting her age several decades ago, I am very flattered by the compliment. Although, if politics is showbusiness for ugly people, does that mean I'm best of a bad lot?"

RUTH LEA

Ruth Lea is director of Global Vision, a eurosceptic campaign group, and non-executive director to the Arbuthnot Banking Group. She was the director of the right-wing think-tank Centre for Policy Studies until 1997.

After 16 years in the civil service, working in the Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry, she moved to the City where she was chief economist at Mitsubishi Bank and chief UK economist at Lehman Brothers.

She then became economics editor of ITN, before spending eight years as head of the policy unit at the Institute of Directors, during which time she became a well-known commentator on business.

She said on Tuesday that we must: "Bite the bullet. Kick Greece out of the euro. The cracks in the currency have long been apparent. The Greeks have acted irresponsibly and must pay the penalty."

TOM CONTI

Tom Conti is a Scottish actor, theatre director and novelist.

His first big TV success was opposite Paul Scofield in Savages in 1973, and he went on to take leading roles in Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes, and Alan Ayckbourne's The Norman Conquests.

He went on to find stardom in the smash hit film Shirley Valentine and more recently, he made guest appearances in Friends as the snobby father-in-law of Ross Geller.

He has had numerous stage successes in his lengthy career, appearing on Broadway in Whose Life Is It Anyway? and taking the lead in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell at the Garrick Theatre in London.

He is currently rehearsing for a run of Eric Chappell's new comedy, Wife After Death.

Conti recently said on BBC's This Week: "Slashing taxes will get money moving again and get the country out of trouble".