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Tory leadership candidates take part in press gallery hustings but Johnson stays away - live news
Tory leadership candidates take part in press gallery hustings but Johnson stays away - live news
(32 minutes later)
Q: Would you commit to giving half your ministerial jobs to women?
Q: Would you have monthly press conferences as PM?
Raab says he wants to bring forward talented women, but he won’t set a quota.
Why so few, says Gove.
Q: Are you confident you will get the 33 votes you need tomorrow? And why is Boris Johnson, the other candidate proposing what is called a “clean Brexit”, so far ahead?
Q: Weekly?
Raab says he is not proposing going straight to a WTO Brexit.
Why not?
He says some YouGov polling today shows he is the only candidate who can beat Johnson amongst the membership.
Q; What would you do about Jeremy Corbyn?
And he is quietly confident of getting the 33 votes, he says.
Gove says he would fight against Corbyn on behalf of the dispossessed. He says Corbyn is more happy speaking up on behalf of Iran than on behalf of the working class.
Q: With recognition to your bigots comment about feminist, do you accept that there is systemic bias against women in society?
Q: Given how Brexit has turned out, do you think it would have been better if you had lost?
Raab says as a laywer he took cases defending women’s rights. And as a war crimes law, he prosecuted people of some of the worse crimes against women. He says he is championing equality. His actions speak for themselves.
Gove says he never thinks it is good to lose a campaign he is involved in.
The quote, from a column in 2012, was about double standards.
Q: What do you think of the fact you are not now seen as proper Brexiter by some?
Q: Theresa May failed to get her deal through because of the definition of a hard border in the joint report of December 2017. Do you accept that definition?
Gove says he discussed this with his mum recently. She said, given all he has done, of course he was a proper Brexiter. He thinks his mum knows best.
Raab says that was a mistake. The wording was ambiguous, so he would not accept it, he says.
Q: How would you reduce the wealth gap between the north and the south?
He says technology can address the border issue. If all the options are used, there is no need for any “state presence” at the border.
Gove says he would improve transport infrastructure in the north, midlands and south west.
He says Dublin has over-emphasised this issue because the Irish government want to keep the UK in the customs union.
And he would also ensure that people can retrain in mid-career.
Q: Has Brexit damaged the Tories’ reputation as a party of Brexit?
Q: Apart from cocaine, have you taken any other illegal drugs?
Raab says he would hold an early budget, and bring the “fiscal horsepower” of the Treasury into play to help business.
Gove says he has already answered questions on this.
We need more “can-do spirit”, he says.
Q: Three years ago you thought Boris Johnson was not fit to be PM. What has he done in the last three years to change your mind?
Q: Isn’t it the truth that people in the EU don’t trust you?
Gove says he thinks Johnson would be a good PM, but that he would be a better one.
Raab says people in Brussels are briefing against him because they fear him.
He says Simon Coveney’s office briefed that Raab wanted a three-month time limit to the extension. No one who knows him believes this.
Dominic Raab starts by praising the media. We have the finest media in the world, he tells us.
(I don’t think we will fall for that.)
Raab says what he stands for his not just an opportunity society, but a second chance society. He mentions mentoring a boy at a boxing club. And he says his father, a refugee, effectively had a second chance too.
Q: Will you honour the Tory manifesto pledge to protect free TV licences for the over-75s?
Yes, says Hunt.
Q: How disappointed were you to come so far behind Boris Johnson last week?
Hunt says he was pleased to come second.
And that’s all from Hunt.
Q: Do you think Boris Johnson is partly to blame for the continuing incarceration of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe?
Hunt says he does not want to comment. Everyone makes mistake. He is sure he will make mistakes too.
Q: What job did you offer Matt Hancock?
No comment, says Hunt.
Q: Do you believe in God?
Yes, says Hunt.
Q: Has Brexit damage the UK’s standing in the world?
The vote to leave the EU didn’t, says Hunt. But the failure to deliver it has.
Q: What do you think of John Bercow?
Hunt says Bercow’s record is mixed. He suggests he has not been impartial, but he says he has done well to open up parliament.
Q: When you were health secretary you said that was likely to be your last job in politics? What has changed?
Hunt says he said that during the doctors’ strike. He was determined not to blink, and he wanted to show he would not back down, even if that were he last job.
Q: What did you think of President Trump’s anti-Khan tweet?
Q: What did you think of President Trump’s anti-Khan tweet?
Hunt says Trump has his own style. But he agrees 150% that Khan should be focusing more on knife crime, and less on politicking.
Gove says it is always a mistake to retweet something from Katie Hopkins.
Q: What do you meant when you say you broadly agree with what Theresa May said about the hard border in Ireland?
Gove says one of his first trips as PM would be a visit to Angela Merkel in Berlin.
Hunt says, when he said he broadly agreed, he meant he broadly agreed. He says he would not allow physical infrastructure on the border.
Q: [From Owen Bennett, who has written the Gove biography with the cocaine revelation] What do you say to the allegation that, in pursuing Brexit, you are putting the interests of the Aberdeen fishing industry above the interests of the City?
Q: An MP told me that Boris Johnson can win over wavering Tory supporters, but you can’t. Why is that?
Gove congratulates Bennett on his book. He jokes about getting a share of the royalties.
Hunt says Johnson comes top in those polls, but he comes second. But the Tories must deliver Brexit, he says. And he is the only person who can deliver for Brexiters, and for Tories now leaning to the Lib Dems.
He says it is not just Aberdeen that is opposed to the CFP; it is the whole country.
Q: Will you sign up to Philip Hammond’s pledge to keep debt falling if you become PM?
Yes, says Gove.
Q: What do you think of the suggestion that Johnson supporters might vote to keep you off the final ballot?
Gove says the idea that Tory MPs are duplicitous is wholly new one to him.
This gets probably the first laugh of the session.
Q: Do you still think the Good Friday agreement was a mistake?
Gove says he was critical of the way the Blair government approached the peace process. But he is glad for what the peace process has achieved.
Q: What do you say to Brexiter who think Brexit must happen by 31 October because the referendum trumps parliament?
Gove says we live in a parliamentary democracy, and we must accept that.
Q: Would you attempt to change the definition of a hard border in the joint report of December 2017?
No, says Gove. He says he would look for other ways of avoiding the backstop. He thinks there is no candidate in the race who understands the politics of Ireland better than he does.
Q: Why have you changed your approach to Boris Johnson?
Gove says he has won increased support over this weekend.
The Tories need someone who can be PM from day one. He thinks he is pre-eminently qualified, he says.
