The election betting scandal has deepened as a Welsh Conservative is being investigated and a cabinet minister revealed he placed bets on the general election date.
Russell George, a Welsh Conservative member of the Senedd, stepped back from the shadow cabinet after it emerged he was facing a probe by the Gambling Commission over alleged betting on the timing of the vote.
He said he would “cooperate fully” with the investigation, and Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies said all other members of the Welsh Conservative Group had “confirmed that they have not placed any bets”.
Mr George is the third Conservative candidate to be named as part of the commission’s investigation, while two Tory officials, Rishi Sunak’s close protection officer and five other officers are also under investigation.
Scotland Secretary Alister Jack said he put three wagers on the timing of the poll but denied breaking any rules and said he is not under investigation.
Up to 15 Conservative candidates and officials are being investigated by the Gambling Commission, according to BBC Newsnight.
The growing scope of the scandal has led to questions over whether politicians should be banned from betting on politics, as footballers are on football.
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Tories launch own probe into betting scandal
Mr Jack said in April he had put £20 at odds of 5/1 on an election being held between July and September but had no knowledge of when it would be called until the day Mr Sunak announced it on 22 May.
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He said he placed two unsuccessful £5 bets in March for a vote to be held in May and June.
Image: Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said he bet on the election but way before it was announced. Pic: PA
“I am very clear that I have never, on any occasion, broken any Gambling Commission rules,” he said.
“Specifically, I did not place any bets on the date of the general election during May [the period under investigation by the Gambling Commission].
“Furthermore, I am not aware of any family or friends placing bets.
“I want to be absolutely clear I have not breached any gambling rules. I placed two unsuccessful bets on the date of the general election and one successful one.”
What is the law around gambling?
There are stricts rules around gambling, with the latest laws updated in 2005.
Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005 deals with cheating and says a person commits an offence if they cheat at gambling or do “anything for the purpose of enabling or assisting another person to cheat at gambling”.
It adds: “It is immaterial whether a person who cheats improves his changes of winning anything, or wins anything.”
Cheating is defined as an “actual or attempted deception or interference in connection with the process by which gambling is conducted, or a real or virtual game, race or other event or process to which gambling relates”.
Someone found guilty of cheating at gambling can be imprisoned for a maximum of two years and/or fined, or be jailed for six months for a lesser offence.
Betting with insider knowledge is also not allowed as an MP, with the MPs’ code of conduct prohibiting members from “causing significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House”.
On Tuesday, Labour got involved in the scandal for the first time after the Labour candidate for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, Kevin Craig, was suspended from the party after betting on a Conservative winning the seat.
It is understood Labour will return £100,000 in donations he has made to the party since Sir Keir Starmer took charge.
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Tuesday also saw five more police officers being added to the Gambling Commission’s investigation after the Met Police passed their names over.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride told Sky News: “There is a broader issue here and a broader debate to be had about gambling around politics and politicians’ involvement in that and to try and establish where the line should be drawn.
“And it may be going forward that everybody concludes that it shouldn’t happen at all.
“It may be that it should happen, but just on a certain basis and so on and so forth. But I think that is a debate, longer-term, that we need to be having.”
Image: Craig Williams and Laura Saunders. Pics: PA/Laura Saunders for Bristol North West
Mr Sunak has withdrawn backing for the first two Tory candidates to be investigated after coming under pressure to take a tougher approach on the alleged use of inside information to bet on the timing of the election.
Laura Saunders and Craig Williams will appear as Conservative candidates on ballot papers as it is too late to remove them, but will have to stand as independents.
Two officials under investigation both took a leave of absence last week when their names were revealed. They are Tony Lee, the Tory’s director of campaigns and husband of Ms Saunders, and Nick Mason, the party’s chief data officer – who has denied any wrongdoing.
A full list of the candidates running for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich is below:
Charlie Caiger, independent Tony Gould, Reform UK Mike Hallatt, independent Brett Mickelburgh, Lib Dems Dan Pratt, Greens Patrick Spencer, Conservatives
It might feel like it’s been even longer for the prime minister at the moment, but it’s been a whole year since Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a historic landslide, emphatically defeating Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives and securing a 174-seat majority.
Over that time, Sir Keir and his party have regularly reset or restated their list of milestones, missions, targets and pledges – things they say they will achieve while in power (so long as they can get all their policies past their own MPs).
We’ve had a look at the ones they have repeated most consistently, and how they are going so far.
Overall, it amounts to what appears to be some success on economic metrics, but limited progress at best towards many of their key policy objectives.
From healthcare to housebuilding, from crime to clean power, and from small boats to squeezed budgets, here are nine charts that show the country’s performance before and after Labour came to power, and how close the government are to achieving their goals.
Image: Sir Keir Starmer has been in office for a year. Pic Reuters
Cost of living
On paper, the target that Labour have set themselves on improving living standards is by quite a distance the easiest to achieve of anything they have spoken about.
They have not set a specific number to aim for, and every previous parliament on record has overseen an increase in real terms disposable income.
The closest it got to not happening was the last parliament, though. From December 2019 to June 2024, disposable income per quarter rose by just £24, thanks in part to the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
By way of comparison, there was a rise of almost £600 per quarter during the five years following Thatcher’s final election victory in 1987, and over £500 between Blair’s 1997 victory and his 2001 re-election.
After the first six months of the latest government, it had risen by £144, the fastest start of any government going back to at least 1954. As of March, it had fallen to £81, but that still leaves them second at this stage, behind only Thatcher’s third term.
VERDICT: Going well, but should have been more ambitious with their target
Get inflation back to 2%
So, we have got more money to play with. But it might not always feel like that, as average prices are still rising at a historically high rate.
Inflation fell consistently during the last year and a half of Rishi Sunak’s premiership, dropping from a peak of 11.1% in October 2022 to exactly 2% – the Bank of England target – in June 2024.
It continued to fall in Labour’s first couple of months, but has steadily climbed back up since then and reached 3.4% in May.
When we include housing costs as well, prices are up by 4% in the last year. Average wages are currently rising by just over 5%, so that explains the overall improvement in living standards that we mentioned earlier.
But there are signs that the labour market is beginning to slow following the introduction of higher national insurance rates for employers in April.
If inflation remains high and wages begin to stagnate, we will see a quick reversal to the good start the government have made on disposable income.
VERDICT: Something to keep an eye on – there could be a bigger price to pay in years to come
‘Smash the gangs’
One of Starmer’s most memorable promises during the election campaign was that he would “smash the gangs”, and drastically reduce the number of people crossing the Channel to illegally enter the country.
More than 40,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats in the 12 months since Labour came to power, a rise of over 12,000 (40%) compared with the previous year.
VERDICT: As it stands, it looks like “the gangs” are smashing the government
Reduce NHS waits
One of Labour’s more ambitious targets, and one in which they will be relying on big improvements in years to come to achieve.
Starmer says that no more than 8% of people will wait longer than 18 weeks for NHS treatment by the time of the next election.
When they took over, it was more than five times higher than that. And it still is now, falling very slightly from 41.1% to 40.3% over the 10 months that we have data for.
So not much movement yet. Independent modelling by the Health Foundation suggests that reaching the target is “still feasible”, though they say it will demand “focus, resource, productivity improvements and a bit of luck”.
VERDICT: Early days, but current treatment isn’t curing the ailment fast enough
Halve violent crime
It’s a similar story with policing. Labour aim to achieve their goal of halving serious violent crime within 10 years by recruiting an extra 13,000 officers, PCSOs and special constables.
Recruitment is still very much ongoing, but workforce numbers have only been published up until the end of September, so we can’t tell what progress has been made on that as yet.
We do have numbers, however, on the number of violent crimes recorded by the police in the first six months of Labour’s premiership. There were a total of 1.1m, down by 14,665 on the same period last year, a decrease of just over 1%.
That’s not nearly enough to reach a halving within the decade, but Labour will hope that the reduction will accelerate once their new officers are in place.
VERDICT: Not time for flashing lights just yet, but progress is more “foot patrol” than “high-speed chase” so far
Build 1.5m new homes
One of Labour’s most ambitious policies was the pledge that they would build a total of 1.5m new homes in England during this parliament.
There has not yet been any new official data published on new houses since Labour came to power, but we can use alternative figures to give us a sense of how it’s going so far.
A new Energy Performance Certificate is granted each time a new home is built – so tends to closely match the official house-building figures – and we have data up to March for those.
Those numbers suggest that there have actually been fewer new properties added recently than in any year since 2015-16.
Labour still have four years to deliver on this pledge, but each year they are behind means they need to up the rate more in future years.
If the 200,000 new EPCs in the year to March 2025 matches the number of new homes they have delivered in their first year, Labour will need to add an average of 325,000 per year for the rest of their time in power to achieve their goal.
VERDICT: Struggling to lay solid foundations
Clean power by 2030
Another of the more ambitious pledges, Labour’s aim is for the UK to produce 95% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.
They started strong. The ban on new onshore wind turbines was lifted within their first few days of government, and they delivered support for 131 new renewable energy projects in the most recent funding round in September.
But – understandably – it takes time for those new wind farms, solar farms and tidal plants to be built and start contributing to the grid.
In the year leading up to Starmer’s election as leader, 54% of the energy on the UK grid had been produced by renewable sources in the UK.
That has risen very slightly in the year since then, to 55%, with a rise in solar and biomass offsetting a slight fall in wind generation.
The start of this year has been unusually lacking in wind, and this analysis does not take variations in weather into account. The government target will adjust for that, but they are yet to define exactly how.
VERDICT: Not all up in smoke, but consistent effort is required before it’s all sunshine and windmills
Fastest economic growth in the G7
Labour’s plan to pay for the improvements they want to make in all the public services we have talked about above can be summarised in one word: “growth”.
The aim is for the UK’s GDP – the financial value of all the goods and services produced in the country – to grow faster than any other in the G7 group of advanced economies.
Since Labour have been in power, the economy has grown faster than European rivals Italy, France and Germany, as well as Japan, but has lagged behind the US and Canada.
The UK did grow fastest in the most recent quarter we have data for, however, from the start of the year to the end of March.
VERDICT: Good to be ahead of other similar European economies, but still a way to go to overtake the North Americans
No tax rises
Without economic growth, it will be difficult to keep to one of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ biggest promises – that there will be no more tax rises or borrowing for the duration of her government’s term.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said last month that she is a “gnat’s whisker” away from being forced to do that at the autumn budget, looking at the state of the economy at the moment.
That whisker will have been shaved even closer by the cost implications of the government’s failure to get its full welfare reform bill through parliament earlier this week.
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5:03
One year of Keir: A review of Starmer’s first 12 months in office
But the news from the last financial year was slightly better than expected. Total tax receipts for the year ending March 2025 were 35% of GDP.
That’s lower than the previous four years, and what was projected after Jeremy Hunt’s final Conservative budget, but higher than any of the 50 years before that.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) still projects it to rise in future years though, to a higher level than the post-WWII peak of 37.2%.
The OBR – a non-departmental public body that provides independent analysis of the public finances – has also said in the past few days that it is re-examining its methodology, because it has been too optimistic with its forecasts in the past.
If the OBR’s review leads to a more negative view of where the economy is going, Rachel Reeves could be forced to break her promise to keep the budget deficit from spiralling out of control.
VERDICT: It’s going to be difficult for the Chancellor to keep to her promise
OVERALL VERDICT: Investment and attention towards things like violent crime, the NHS and clean energy are yet to start bearing fruit, with only minuscule shifts in the right direction for each, but the government is confident that what’s happened so far is part of its plans.
Labour always said that the house-building target would be achieved with a big surge towards the back end of their term, but they won’t be encouraged by the numbers actually dropping in their first few months.
Where they are failing most dramatically, however, appears to be in reducing the number of migrants making the dangerous Channel crossing on small boats.
The economic news, particularly that rise in disposable income, looks more healthy at the moment. But with inflation still high and growth lagging behind some of our G7 rivals, that could soon start to turn.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Gunnar Strömmer reportedly said that Swedish authorities had confiscated more than $8.3 million worth of criminal profits since a law related to seizures was passed in 2024.