You can picture the scene inside the BBC’s creative team meeting.

‘How can we boost the figures for Question Time next week?’ asks a producer, as he munches on a humus and taramasalata pitta on a bed of Guardian pullout pages.

‘Nick Griffin?’

‘Done that, didn’t really work out.’

‘Kelvin McKenzie?’

‘Had him last week. Plus the week before. And seemingly every bloomin’ week since 1987.’

‘Nick Clegg?’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘I’ve got it,’ says our man, almost choking on his guava juice. ‘Why not film in a prison and get Ken Clarke on the panel!’ Bingo!

Far be it from me to suggest next week’s edition of the show, which comes from Wormwood Scrubs, is a publicity stunt, although it clearly is.

The Beeb promises there will be just 10 inmates included in the audience, all serving time for non-violent offences and all vetted to ensure they won’t pose a threat to Ken or to former home secretary Jack Straw, also sitting on the panel.

Aside from perhaps asking for a reduced sentence, no doubt the incarcerated audience members will be posing questions on the European Court of Human Rights’ insistence that convicted prisoners be given the vote.

David Cameron opposes the idea, conscious of upsetting ‘outraged of Tunbridge Wells’ - the Middle England electorate on which he depends.

Now call me a lily-livered liberal if you like (please don’t though), but I’m with Europe on this particular issue.

We gain nothing as a society from denying basic human rights to prisoners.

All this attitude serves is to antagonise, alienate and isolate those who may already feel aggrieved with the state.

Prisoners are generally not the Norman Stanley Fletcher career criminal-type, they are the abandoned, the destitute, the unloved.

They are alcohol or drug dependants.

They are the adult product of an abused childhood, a reflection on society’s inability to school, inspire or guide them.

The Daily Telegraph letter-writer will inevitably point out that criminals have given up their right to be a part of society, but simply by committing an offence does not mean they have become inhuman.

To vote is to exercise a basic human right.

We want these people to feel part of the world they will be released back into.

Why should they not have a say in who runs it? And why shouldn’t politicians be encouraged to reach out to convicted prisoners? These are people most at need from government intervention, and ministers should have to take their views into account.

Some of those voices will be heard next Thursday in front of a larger-than-usual Question Time audience.

Publicity stunt or not, the BBC is prepared to give prisoners a platform.

The time is right to allow them into the ballot box as well.