People smugglers will need bigger boat if Labour wins election, Sunak says

There was no winner in the last prime ministerial debate before voting day, according to a YouGov poll

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, speaks during a live TV election debate, hosted by the BBC in Nottingham. AFP

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak asked if his election rival Keir Starmer was planning to make a deal with the ayatollahs in Iran or Taliban in Afghanistan to send back asylum seekers rejected by the UK, during the leaders' last televised debate before next week's general polls.

The migrants are coming from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, Mr Sunak said.

“Will you sit down with the ayatollahs? Are you going to try to do a deal with the Taliban? It’s completely nonsensical – you are taking people for fools,” he said.

“The Rwanda plan is a deterrent, you just have to listen to what the illegal migrants themselves are saying.

"One of them just said, ‘Most of us are still in France due to the fear we have about Rwanda’.".

“Another one said, ‘I won’t cross the Channel until the Rwanda plan is destroyed’.

"If Labour win, the people smugglers are going to need a bigger boat. Don’t surrender our borders to the Labour Party.”

Rishi Sunak through the years - in pictures

Mr Starmer responded: “Record numbers coming across the Channel and he says it’s a deterrent.

"There are a few hundred that will go on a flight to Rwanda, a huge expense to taxpayers.

"There are tens of thousands, 15,000 people have come since Rishi Sunak has been Prime Minister.”

Mr Starmer criticised Mr Sunak over the Westminster betting scandal, accusing him of being bullied into responding to the issue.

“You have to lead from the front on issues like this," the opposition leader said.

"I think that in the last 14 years, politics has become too much about self entitlement and MPs thinking about what they could get for themselves.

“The instinct of these people to think the first thing they should do is try to make money. That was the wrong instinct, and we have to change that.

“What I did, when one of my team was alleged to have been involved and investigated by the Gambling Commission, they were suspended within minutes, because I knew it made it really important to be swift.

"The Prime Minister delayed and delayed and delayed until eventually he was bullied into taking action.”

Keir Starmer through the years - in pictures

Mr Sunak replied: “It was important to me, that given the seriousness and the sensitivity of the matters at hand that they were dealt with properly, and that’s what I’ve done."

A member of the audience asked: “Are you two really the best we’ve got to be the next prime minister of our great country?”

Mr Starmer said: “I’m not surprised after 14 years of this that people feel this way because the country is in such a state.

“They’ve had loads of promises made in the last election about what will happen which haven’t been delivered on. That does beat the hope out of people.

“The very first question was about integrity in politics, and again people haven’t seen that integrity.

"They’ve had partygate, they’ve had breach of Covid rules, you’ve had the contracts for Covid – the instinct of some people is to think the first thing in Covid I’m going to do is try to make money.

“So, this is an opportunity to restore that hope. I don’t think we can do that by making sort of grand promises of things that can’t be delivered.”

Rather, he said, it is “the ordinary hope of getting on yourself, getting on for your family, getting on for your community, your country.

"It has to be rooted, if we’re going to restore hope in my view, in returning politics to service, the sense that you come into politics to serve."

During the debate, Mr Sunak pointed to a media report that the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, said Labour’s net-zero plans would cost “hundreds of billions”.

“Just go online, go to the Telegraph website, because we’ve just found a recording they’ve put out there from the deputy chancellor from the Labour Party admitting that their plan would cost hundreds of billions of pounds,” Mr Sunak said.

“Do not surrender to their tax rises."

The BBC moderator jumped in to explain that Mr Sunak was referring to an article saying that it had obtained a recording of Darren Jones saying decarbonising the economy would cost that much.

“Yes, it is absolutely right that we want to get investors to come in alongside that government money," Mr Starmer said.

"It won’t surprise you we’ve been talking to global investors for the best part of two years to say, ‘If we put down this amount of money in our manifesto, will you come alongside it and put down many more billions of pounds so that in partnership we make the change that we need?’”

Early in the debate, Mr Starmer took a swipe at the Conservative Party leader, accusing Mr Sunak of being “out of touch” when it comes to welfare benefits.

To applause from the studio audience, the Labour leader said: “If you listen to the people in the audience, across the country, more often, you might not be quite so out of touch.”

There was no winner in the BBC prime ministerial debate, according to a YouGov snap poll.

In a survey of 1,716 viewers, 47 per cent said Mr Starmer won, 47 per cent said Mr Sunak did, and 6 per cent said they did not know.

Throughout the televised debate, the sound of a protest outside the BBC venue could be heard in the background.

Pro-Palestine demonstrators were among those standing outside the Nottingham Trent University building.

Mishal Hussain, the presenter, confirmed to the audience that the demonstration was taking place.