THE BBC has been accused of turning into “Tory TV” over a shocking imbalance in its political guests in June.

It was the worst month for SNP appearances since The National began its analysis of these figures in February.

More than half of guests who appeared on the BBC’s flagship political shows across the month were Tory politicians – even including those without affiliation, such as academics.

The research by the Sunday National also revealed that the SNP had less than 2% of political slots on the channel, despite being the third biggest party at Westminster and Scotland’s largest.

READ MORE: SNP bring in Ofcom over Jeremy Vine show 'guff' on independence

The figures are for the The Andrew Marr Show, Question Time, Newsnight, Politics Live and the Victoria Derbyshire show.

With SNP politicians on these shows only five times in total, both the LibDems with eight and Brexit Party with seven appearances featured more often.

The Tories were given 143 of 285 total slots – with Labour trailing in second place with 40. No other parties made it into double figures.

Keith Brown, the SNP’s depute leader, said: “The BBC morphed into Tory TV in June. These latest figures are shocking, with more Tories appearing as guests than all other parties plus political commentators put together.

“The Tories got a measly 11% of the vote in Scotland in May’s European election but they are on our TV screens every day, often without any opposition voices and as if they are the only party in the UK.

“The SNP are not the only ones cut out of the UK wide political debate on the BBC as wall-to-wall Tories dominate appearances on current affairs programmes.

READ MORE: BBC says public backs high salaries because stars are 'talented'

“This is not a healthy situation. A functioning democracy needs its public service broadcaster to be balanced, showing due impartiality and represent the views of the audiences across the nations of the UK – but this is clearly not happening.”

The SNP has a number of live complaints lodged with the BBC.

Derbyshire’s show was the worst offender in June, with 75% of its slots going to the Tories, and not a single SNP politician featuring.

Marr was the other show to go the full month without a representative of the SNP.

Excluding guests who were not representatives of the political parties, Newsnight had the highest proportion of Tories – four-fifths of those on the show were from the party.

The Greens, Ukip and Change UK each had one slot in June, and Plaid Cymru two.

Question Time was the most balanced between the Tories and Labour – with six and five appearances respectively – but still had only one panellist from the SNP.

Asked to provide justification for these figures, a BBC spokesperson said: “Counting guest appearances across a selection of programmes is not the measure of impartiality.

“We cover stories as they arise, and use our editorial judgement about who we should hear from – the Conservatives have been running a leadership contest for the UK’s next prime minister so it is to be expected that they would have appeared frequently on our output.”

Despite having more seats at Westminster, the LibDems appeared at least as much as or more than the SNP on all shows except Newsnight.

The vast majority of the Brexit Party’s appearances – five out of seven – were made on Politics Live.

The Welsh pro-independence party, Plaid Cymru, which has four seats in the House of Commons, appeared once on Newsnight and once on Question Time.

Since March, the SNP have never reached double figures in monthly appearances on the BBC.