Rishi Sunak has said he is “incredibly angry” to learn of allegations that Tory candidates placed bets on the election date, calling it a “really serious matter”.
The prime minister told the BBC Question Time leader’s special that “it’s right they’re being investigated by relevant law enforcement” and he is “crystal clear that if anyone has broken the rules they should face [the] full force of the law”.
Asked why those under suspicion haven’t been suspended, Mr Sunak said an investigation had to take place first – but anyone guilty would be “booted out” of the party.
Election latest: BBC Question Time hosting party leaders
Two Conservative candidates are being investigated by the Gambling Commission over alleged wagers placed on the date of the 4 July contest.
Laura Saunders, the candidate for Bristol North West, has worked for the party since 2015 and is married to the Conservative Party’s director of campaigns, Tony Lee.
Ms Saunders earlier said she “will be co-operating with the Gambling Commission” probe, while her husband, “took a leave of absence” from his role on Wednesday night, a Conservative Party spokesman told Sky News.
The revelation came a week after the prime minister’s close parliamentary aide Craig Williams, the Tory candidate in Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr, admitted to putting a “flutter” on the election, saying this has resulted in “some routine inquiries” which he was co-operating with “fully”.
The prime minister’s close protection officer has also been arrested and suspended over alleged bets about the timing of the election.
A gambling industry source told Sky News that “more names” are being looked at, though police “are not involved”.
Mr Sunak was asked by an audience member, to a round of applause, if the allegations are “the absolute epitome of the lack of ethics that we have had to tolerate from the Conservative party for years and years”.
He replied: “I was incredibly angry to learn of these allegations. It is a really serious matter.”
“I want to be crystal clear that if anyone has broken the rules, they should face the full force of the law.”
Quizzed over why the candidates have not been suspended while the investigations take place, Mr Sunak said the “integrity of that process should be respected”.
He 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.”
Labour Party campaign sources told Sky News they noticed the odds on a July election narrow the day before Mr Sunak announced it on 22 May.
Earlier, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for Ms Saunders to be suspended and said it is “very telling” Mr Sunak has not already done so.
“If it was one of my candidates, they’d be gone and their feet would not have touched the floor,” he added.
Mr Sunak faced many questions about trust during the BBC grilling, with the first audience member asking if he would “confess to small amount of embarrassment” after having five prime ministers in the last seven years and the UK becoming something of an “international laughingstock”.
He said that “very clearly mistakes had been made” and asked the public to judge him on the last 18 months in office.
He faced shouts of “shame” when he launched an attack on the “foreign court” – the European Court of Human Rights – and also insisted he was glad he called the election when he did despite his standing in the polls plummeting further since then.
Having named the date of the election amid a 20-point deficit, the prime minister has failed to make up ground in a campaign dominated by political gaffes – notably his early exit from a D-day event.
The gambling scandal was the latest blow, after multiple projections of a historic Labour landslide and a number of big figures – from a Tory donor to a former Tory minister – announcing they would back Keir Starmer for the first ever time.
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