Rishi Sunak Sunak ‘disappointed’ after ‘huge error of judgement’ by aide who bet on July general election

Published

3 months ago

June 13, 2024

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he is “disappointed” after his aide Craig Williams bet on a July election.

Mr Williams, who was the PM’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS), is facing an investigation after he “put a flutter on the general election” just days before the 4 July date was announced.

A PPS is a backbench MP who acts as the prime minister’s “eyes and ears” in the Commons.

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He has so far refused to confirm whether he had any inside information when he placed the bet.

Today, Mr Sunak was asked if Mr Williams knew about the July date at the time.

He told reporters in Puglia, where he is attending the G7 summit: “Well, it’s very disappointing news and you would have seen Craig Williams say that it was a huge error of judgement.”

As the Gambling Commission is now conducting an investigation, Mr Sunak said it “wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment while that’s ongoing”.

Asked two more times, the PM would not budge, saying it “wouldn’t be right for me to comment… given the nature of the inquiry, it is necessarily independent and confidential”.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey was today asked on the campaign trail what he thought.

“I don’t know the details of the case, but if someone knows the outcome of something, it seems to me morally questionable for them to put a bet on it if they know the result of that outcome,” he said.

Dyfed-Powys Police, the force in Mr Williams’s constituency, said the event does not “require police involvement” as the Gambling Commission has “the powers to investigate and prosecute under the Gambling Act”.

Mr Williams placed a £100 bet on a July election just days before Mr Sunak named the date as 4 July, The Guardian first reported.

He was said to have placed the bet at a Ladbrokes in his constituency and based on odds at the time he would have won £500.

Mr Williams today told the BBC he “apologises” and yesterday said he “should have thought through how it looks”.

He is standing in this election in Montgomeryshire & Glyndwr in next month’s election, alongside Jeremy Brignell-Thorp for the Green Party, Oliver Lewis for Reform UK, Glyn Preston for the Liberal Democrats, Elwyn Vaughan for Plaid Cymru and Steve Witherden for Labour.

Politics

Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer ‘very sensible’ to accept football tickets worth thousands

Published

5 hours ago

September 21, 2024

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Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer 'very sensible' to accept football tickets worth thousands

Lisa Nandy has said Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to accept thousands of pounds worth of football tickets was “very sensible”.

The minister for culture, media and sport also said she had never accepted free clothes from a donor.

Speaking to Sky News at the start of the Labour Party conference today, the MP for Wigan said: “The problem that has arisen since [Sir Keir] became leader of the opposition and then prime minister is that for him to sit in the stands would require a huge security detail, would be disruptive for other people and it would cost the taxpayer a lot of money.

“So I think he’s taken a very sensible decision that’s not the right and appropriate thing to do, and it’s right to accept that he has to go and sit in a different area.

“But I know that he’d much rather be sitting in the stands cheering people on with the usual crowd that he’s been going to the football with for years.”

Ms Nandy also said while she has not accepted free clothes – joking “I think you can probably see that I choose my own clothes sadly” – she doesn’t “make any judgements about what other members of parliament do”.

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She said: “The only judgement I would make is if they’re breaking the rules, so they’re trying to hide what they’re doing. That’s when problems arise.

“Because the point of being open and transparent is that people can see where the relationships are, and they can then judge for themselves whether there’s been any undue influence.”

She asserted there had not been an undue influence in gifts accepted by senior Labour figures, adding: “We don’t want the news and the commentary to be dominated by conversations about clothes.

“We rightly have a system, I think, where the taxpayer doesn’t fund these things. We don’t claim on expenses for them. And so MPs will always take donations, will always take gifts in kind.

“MPs of all political parties have historically done that and that is the system that we have.”

She added: “I don’t think there’s any suggestion here that Keir Starmer has broken any rules. I don’t think there’s any suggestion that he’s done anything wrong.

“We expect our politicians to be well turned out, we expect them to be people who go out and represent us at different events and represent the country at different events and are clothed appropriately.

“But the point is that when we accept donations for that or for anything else, that we declare them and we’re open and transparent about them.”

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Sir Keir, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves said yesterday they will no longer accept donations in the future to pay for clothes.

The announcement followed criticism of Sir Keir’s gifts from donors, which included clothing worth £16,200 and multiple pairs of glasses worth £2,485, according to the MPs’ register of interests.

The register shows Ms Rayner has accepted clothing donations to the value of £2,230.

Sky News also revealed the scale of Sir Keir’s donations this week as part of our Westminster Accounts investigation.

Sir Keir was found to have received substantially more gifts and freebies than any other MP – his total in gifts, benefits, and hospitality topped £100,000 since December 2019.