Unionist and nationalist parties have complained to BBC Northern Ireland after the first televised debate of all seven European candidates was broadcast.

At one stage during the lively Politics Show debate, recorded over a week ago at Queen's University, presenter Jim Fitzpatrick suggested he should ask the audience whether DUP candidate Diane Dodds should stop talking.

The audience, which included around six members from all the main political parties, then broke into loud applause and Mrs Dodds, who had earlier criticised Mr Fitzpatrick, said it was “most unfair”.

The DUP afterwards registered a protest with the show's editor, Michael Cairns, over how the debate had been handled.

Nationalist politicians also voiced concern that most of the programme, more than 35 minutes, had focused exclusively on the three unionist candidates, Mrs Dodds, Conservative and Unionist Jim Nicholson and former DUP MEP Jim Allister. An SDLP source said it was “a mess”.

Mr Allister's Traditional Unionist Voice sought assurances from BBC producers that the debate would not be edited if the DUP put the programme-makers under pressure.

The spat came after Mrs Dodds produced documentation purporting to show the three incumbents had not made sufficient contact with the UK government department looking after dairy farmers forced to produce milk “at cost to themselves”.

Mr Nicholson said: “Don't make allegations you cannot stand over.”

Mr Allister said: “Don't make it up.”

Mrs Dodds had earlier asked Mr Fitzpatrick whether he was going to chair the discussion or not and asked him to show authority.

Green candidate Steven Agnew, however, drew the first applause when he criticised the Government for failing to fulfill its promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

But Mr Allister was also applauded when he said the issue of the expenses scandal is compounded in Northern Ireland by politicians ‘double-jobbing’.

Sinn Fein's Bairbre de Brun cut in between Allister and Dodds to say: “He (Allister) was an MEP for the DUP. Surely the DUP knows what happened to the money?”

Mr Allister also interrupted Mrs Dodds over the mechanisms of peace funding and accused her of a “total lack of knowledge” to which she replied “nonsense”.

Mrs Dodds also clashed in an aside with Mr Nicholson over his son's difficulties in eking a living from the family farm.

The SDLP's Alban Maginness said it was essential that the three MEPs from Northern Ireland should work together and Ian Parsley of Alliance pointed to the “rabble” of Orange and Green politics and said: “We have to move beyond that.”

A BBC spokeswoman said: “At this moment in time we are not aware of any complaints regarding the show.”