'How can we trust you?': Student grills Sir Ed Davey over coalition years

The leader of the Liberal Democrats admitted he is "not proud" of some votes he took part in during the coalition government.

Sir Ed Davey has said he "understands" why a generation of voters "lost faith" in the Liberal Democrats after the party abandoned its pledge to scrap tuition fees in the 2010 coalition government.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats was challenged by a student over his party's decision to break their manifesto pledge and asked how the party can be trusted.

"In 2010 your party promised to abolish tuition fees and that was the centre of your campaign," the student said.

"Now students like myself are burdened with hundreds of thousands of pounds of student debt. How can my generation trust you?"

In response, Davey said: “I understand why your generation lost faith in us. It was a difficult government to be in.”

He said the loss of trust in his party after that period was “very scarring” and admitted he was “not proud” of some of the votes he had to take part in.

Davey also faced tough questions about his time as a minister in the Horizon scandal, during the grilling of the four main party leaders by members of the public on BBC Question Time.

He was asked whether he was “proud” of his conduct as postal affairs minister under the coalition government between 2010 and 2012.

He has recently come under fire for failing to do more to help wrongly convicted sub-postmasters when he held the brief and for initially refusing to meet Alan Bates in 2010.

Davey said he made “two big mistakes during that time”, including failing to meet the campaigner and not seeing through assurances given to him by the Post Office that Mr Bates’ assertions were not true.

The Liberal Democrat leader went first in the BBC Question Time special, which also featured Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for the Tories, Sir Keir Starmer for Labour and Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney for the SNP.

Sunak grilled by audience on Conservative's record

Members of the audience shouted “shame” when Rishi Sunak said he would prioritise the UK’s security over the European Convention on Human Rights.

“I believe everything we are doing is compliant with our international obligations,” the prime minister said.

Sunak said he was “prepared to do what it takes” to begin sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, adding that the country does not need a “foreign court” to issue instructions on border security.

“I will put our country first,” he added.

Calls of “shame on you” could still be heard during the programme’s closing credits.

Sunak said he believed he had chosen the right moment to call the General Election.

He told the audience: “It was the right moment to call the election, for the reasons that I have outlined.”

Asked if he was glad to have called the election, he added: “I am.”

The prime minister compared his current prospects to those he had during the Tory leadership contest of 2022.

Sunak said: “Even though people didn’t want to hear it at the time, I kept going, I kept saying what I thought was right for this country, I kept going until the end and you know what? I was proved right then.

“And that is why you can trust me now when I say that what Keir Starmer is promising you is the same fantasy as Liz Truss did and it is just going to make your taxes go up and that matters to me because I don’t want that to happen.”

Starmer asked why he had not kept university tuition fees promise

Sir Keir Starmer claimed he was a “common sense politician” when he was asked why he had not kept a promise to abolish university tuition fees.

Asked why he had backtracked on the pledge, the Labour leader said: “We don’t have the money to do everything we want to do. We do want to change the tuition fees.

“But I have a choice to make, which was of the available money do I use it for getting rid of the tuition fees… or do I use that money to get our waiting lists down? That is a political decision and I took it.

“I am not going to do the tuition fees abolition, because I want to put that money to get our NHS back on its feet.”

Starmer also said he chose Labour’s plan for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies over nationalising energy companies, as the latter would require huge amounts of money to “pay off the shareholders”.

Independence dominates Swinney's questions

SNP leader John Swinney told the audience that independence is necessary if Scotland is to become “a fairer, more equal country”.

Scotland’s First Minister said that when he became party leader at a “difficult time” just over six weeks ago, he was tasked with rebuilding the trust of the Scottish people and with improving people’s lives.

He said the SNP is committed to eradicating child poverty and strengthening the economy, as well as pledging to “put in the resources” to address immediate problems like NHS waiting lists.

It was pointed out to him that Scotland had 7,000 people waiting for over two years, compared with just 300 in England, and he attributed this to the complex health conditions some people were experiencing.

winney also highlighted the importance of Scottish independence and of rejoining the EU to his party’s domestic agenda, and made his arguments for independence clear when asked whether he would settle for more devolved powers instead.

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