Sunak defends decision not to take immediate action against Tories in betting scandal – as it happened | General election 2024

A summary of today’s developments

Rishi Sunak said he understands voters’ hesitation to support the Tories, but urged them not to “sleepwalk” into a Labour government.

Speaking at a campaign event in Chelsea, London, the PM said: “We can’t let Britain sleepwalk into this. It is our job, it is our duty over the next 10 days to wake people up to this danger.

“So I say to all of you, I say to every Conservative, don’t surrender to Labour, fight for every vote, fight for our values, fight for our vision of Britain.”

He added: “I understand people’s hesitation with giving us their support again.

“I’m not blind to their frustrations with me, with our party, the last few years have not been easy for anyone with Covid, with Ukraine, we have not got everything right, we haven’t made as much progress as we would have liked in some areas.

“But this election is not a byelection, it is not a referendum on me, or our party, it is a choice about the future of our country and the government you want to lead for five years.”

And that brings the interview to a conclusion.

Next up on is the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, on Friday night.

Ramsay adds: “I’m not going to get into talking about individual candidates, because if there are questions raised about candidates, then there is a process for them to be investigated, and there may well still be current investigations ongoing.”

Robinson says the Greens dropped a candidate who “tweeted his hunch that Israel had paid Hamas to carry out the atrocities on October the 7th.” He added the party has candidates on ballot papers next to the words “the Green Party,” one liked a tweet that said, “Israel must be eliminated,” another likened Israel supporters to Nazis. Another claimed “the victims of the holocaust had turned into the predators, and finally, one likened Hamas to the resistance in France, in the Second World War.”

Ramsay responds: “None of those comments you’ve quoted are one that I would make or in any way condone. And as you say, the Green Party has had situations where there were candidates who were originally selected, questions have been made about comments that they have made themselves or they’ve liked on social media, and in four cases, the party has taken action to – which has resulted in those candidates no longer going forward.”

Robinson says the Greens’ manifesto mentions creating a legally regulated market for drugs. Does that mean legalising all drugs, and then regulating them?

Ramsay says: “It says that we would introduce an independent commission on drugs, to address the fact that the war on drugs has failed, we have growing numbers of people who are addicted to drugs, often harmful substances, we have a huge amount of power in the hands of criminal gangs that are profiting from that, and we need to see drug addiction as a medical issue, not as a criminal issue, to support individuals who are addicted to regulate those drugs, which, as I say, are in the hands of criminal gangs. And let’s look through this independent commission at how other countries around the world have introduced more enlightened policies, that do actually support people who are addicted.”

Ram say adds “And my second point I would make is that this whole discussion, as so many people have said, has become highly toxic, in a way that ignores the fact that we have very high levels of violence against women and girls, we have a gender pay gap in this country, we have…growing rates of hate crime against trans people.”

Robinson says the Greens in Scotland launched a fight to change the law, so that men could declare themselves to be women without involving a doctor, so called gender ID. He asks have you learnt from the decision to send a rapist called Adam to a woman’s prison after he changed his name and changed his gender and asked to be called Isla.

Ramsay says “First of all, to answer your question specifically, yes, I think there has to be learning for all of society on the way these changes are made, and ensuring that all spaces, whether they be prisons or any other public spaces, are run in a way that is safe for everybody involved, preserves people’s dignity, is absolutely paramount, and the government has been clear, male bodied people should not be put in female prisons…”

Robinson said the IFS compared the Greens with Nigel Farage’s Reform Party because their ideas are “wholly unattainable”.

Ramsay says: “I’ve quoted to you what other experts have said, welcoming our proposals, other economists, financial experts, who’ve said the Green Party is bringing in a different way of thinking, that by European standards is actually fairly normal, and

we can’t expect to have the level of health services, the quality of education system that other countries have, if we don’t put the investment in that’s needed.”

Robinson says 12 European countries introduced wealth tax. Nine of them, including

France got rid of it.

Ramsay replies: “There was a particular problem with the way France introduced it, which was that it set the starting point too low. We’re proposing a wealth tax starting at 10 million, so if someone has 10 million in wealth and assets, we’d ask them to pay 1%, just 1%, of that wealth and assets back into society.”

On a proposal for more tax on the rich where £50 to £70 billion the Greens say could be raised, Ramsay says “Well, we’ve been working closely with academics and experts around a range of models for how a wealth tax could work, and we’ve been fairly cautious in the model and in the assumptions that we’ve chosen around that, and on the day our manifesto was released.”

Ramsay adds: “So, the share of the economy that goes into tax at the moment is near the bottom of the European league table. What we’re proposing would move us up, but we would still be below where France and other countries are, so actually, it’s Labour and Conservatives that are way out of step with what other countries are doing.

“The IFS, Institute for Fiscal Studies, has been very clear that the next government is either going to have to cut public services, or increase taxes, and so the Green Party is the only party being honest in this election, that says, actually, by European standards, we can make fairly modest changes to the tax system, asking those with the broadest shoulders to pay modestly more.”

Robinson says the total cost of the Greens’ policies would be £145 billion a year on day to day spending. Labour say they’d spend £5 billion. This is what the Conservatives say they’d spend on tax cuts and they would spent £17 bn.

Ramsay says: “Why is there such a difference? Because we have an NHS at breaking point that requires substantial investment and the Nuffield Trust has been clear that the Labour and Conservative proposals that you’ve outlined here would leave the NHS worse off than it was under David Cameron’s austerity. We need the transition to the green economy in a way that tackles the cost of living crisis. We need to invest in our schools that are crumbling and where teachers don’t have the money to spend on the things they need to provide our children with a good education.”

Robinson continues to grill Ramsay about a carbon tax being a tax on meat, cars, deliveries which could raised £90 billion. The IFS thinktank said it would be impossible to raise that sort of money without the effect being felt by everyone.

Ramsay replies: “What we‘re proposing in the carbon tax, is a tax that hits the big polluting companies that are causing the climate emergency, that has a huge impact on people on poorer incomes. So, a tax for example, on high polluting imports of goods, that undermine British manufacturing, we want to support low carbon British

manufacturing. We also want to have a carbon tax on those big polluting companies, and actually, ordinary people are suffering from the fact that this government is not acting on these issues. We have escalating energy bills, escalating food bills, extortionate train prices.”