Sunak fights election betting scandal as he vows to get Rwanda flights off ground

Leaders of the four main parties faced questions from the public in a BBC televised special

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a four-party leadership BBC Question Time Election Special in York, northern England, on June 20. AFP

Conservative members who are found to have broken betting rules “should face the full force of the law” and will be “booted out” of the party, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said.

Mr Sunak made the comment as the four main party leaders faced a grilling by members of the public during the BBC Question Time Leaders’ Special on Thursday.

The TV show also featured Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey and Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney for the SNP, with Mr Sunak up last.

He faced tough questions over the betting scandal that has hit his faltering general election campaign, in which people with links to the Conservative Party or No 10 have been caught up in accusations of gambling on the date of the July 4 contest.

“Aren’t these emerging allegations about betting on the election date the absolute epitome of the lack of ethics that we’ve had to tolerate from the Conservative Party for years and years?” a member of the audience asked Mr Sunak, to applause.

He responded: “Well, like you, I was incredibly angry, incredibly angry to learn of these allegations.

“It’s a really serious matter. It’s right that they’re being investigated properly by the relevant law enforcement authorities, including as [host Fiona Bruce] said, a criminal investigation by the police.

“I want to be crystal clear that if anyone has broken the rules, they should face the full force of the law. And that’s what those investigations are there to do.

"And I hope that they do their work as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.”

After calls for their suspension, he suggested he could not comment during the “confidential” investigation, but added: “What I can tell you is if anyone is found to have broken the rules, not only should they face the full consequences of the law, I will make sure that they are booted out of the Conservative party.”

Conservative candidate Laura Saunders earlier said she “will be co-operating with the Gambling Commission” inquiry, while her husband, the Tories’ director of campaigning, Tony Lee, took leave amid reports that they were being investigated by the gambling regulator.

Who's who in the Conservative cabinet - in pictures

On migration, Mr Sunak said migrants make a contribution to the UK, but they should be expected to support their dependants.

“Of course migrants can make a contribution to our country and do – like my parents, as you said, like my grandparents," he said.

"My point is that the levels of migration that we have seen are too high and they need to come down.

“What we have done is say that people are going to bring family members here, they just need to be able to support them."

Members of the audience shouted “shame” when Mr Sunak said he would give priority to the UK’s security over the European Convention on Human Rights.

“I believe everything we are doing is compliant with our international obligations,” he said.

Mr Sunak said he was “prepared to do what it takes” to begin sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, and that the country does not need a “foreign court” for instructions on border security.

“I will put our country first,” he said.

Calls of “shame on you” could still be heard during the programme’s closing credits.

Rishi Sunak's childhood landmarks - in pictures

Mr Sunak also said he believed he had chosen the right moment to call the general election.

“It was the right moment to call the election, for the reasons that I have outlined,” he told the audience

He compared his current prospects to those he had during the Tory leadership contest of 2022.

“Even though people didn’t want to hear it at the time, I kept going, I kept saying what I thought was right for this country, I kept going until the end, and you know what? I was proved right then," Mr Sunak said.

“And that is why you can trust me now when I say that what Keir Starmer is promising you is the same fantasy as Liz Truss did, and it is just going to make your taxes go up, and that matters to me because I don’t want that to happen.”

Keir Starmer says he is 'a common sense politician'

Keir Starmer said during the debate that Jeremy Corbyn would have been a better prime minister than Boris Johnson.

The Labour leader ducked questions over whether he believed his predecessor would make a “great” prime minister, as he said in 2019.

Ms Bruce repeatedly challenged him over that statement, but Mr Starmer insisted: “It wasn’t a question that really arose because I didn’t think we were going to win the election.”

When he did not give a “yes” or “no” answer to whether he meant it, there was laughter from the audience as he instead said Mr Corbyn would have made a better prime minister than Mr Johnson.

Mr Starmer was also quizzed over his claim last week that the Conservatives had built a “Jeremy Corbyn-style manifesto” that would “load everything into the wheelbarrow” without explaining how to pay for it.

An audience member asked him: “You criticised the Tory manifesto as Jeremy Corbyn-like. Anything you want can go in it, nothing is costed. Why did you back his original manifesto in 2019?”

Mr Starmer replied: “In 2019 I campaigned for the Labour Party as I’ve always campaigned for the Labour Party.”

Who's who in the Labour cabinet - in pictures

He said that later it became clear the electorate “thought it was too much and they wanted to see something which was fully costed and fully funded”.

Liberal Democrats unable to escape the student loan pledge fiasco

Mr Davey, who was first in the line-up, faced difficult questions about his record in the coalition years and as minister during the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.

Challenged by a student over the Lib Dems abandoning their pledge to scrap tuition fees in the coalition government, he said: “I understand why your generation lost faith in us. It was a difficult government to be in.”

He said the loss of trust in his party that followed was “very scarring” and admitted he was “not proud” of some of the votes he had to take part in.

Mr Davey was also asked whether he was proud of his conduct as postal affairs minister under the coalition government between 2010 and 2012.

He has recently come under fire for failing to do more to help wrongly convicted sub-postmasters and for initially refusing to meet Alan Bates in 2010.

Mr Davey said he made “two big mistakes during that time”, including failing to meet the campaigner – although he subsequently did agree to meet him – and not seeing through assurances given to him by the Post Office that Mr Bates’s assertions were not true.

“I’m sorry for not seeing through those lies. There were many ministers of all political parties during this 20-year period who didn’t see through those lies,” he said.

He said he hoped “people go to prison” over “the biggest miscarriage of justice in our country’s history”.

Mr Swinney, asked whether he was going to carry on with independence referendums “until you get the answer you want”, stressed his belief that Scotland would be better as an independent country.

He said Brexit was the source of the problems, and that rejoining the EU would provide a boost to the country’s manufacturing sector.

There was no spot on the programme for Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, who demanded one because of his party’s strong showing in the opinion polls.

The BBC responded by insisting Mr Farage and Reform have received coverage across BBC outlets.

“The Ofcom guidance gives ‘greater weight on the actual performance of a political party in elections over opinion poll data’, taking into account the ‘greater uncertainty associated with support in opinion polls’,” it said.

The BBC later confirmed another Question Time Leaders’ Special, featuring representatives from Reform UK and the Green Party, will be broadcast on June 28.