PM bets Morgan £1,000 Rwanda f lights take off

RISHI Sunak has bet Piers Morgan £1,000 he will begin migrant flights to Rwanda before the next election, expected this autumn.

In an interview with the TalkTV presenter, the Prime Minister appeared to accept the wager, and said he was ‘working incredibly hard to get the people on the planes’.

Labour’s immigration spokesman Stephen Kinnock described the bet as ‘deeply distasteful’, but Downing Street said it showed Mr Sunak’s ‘absolute confidence’ in the policy’s success.

The PM’s spokesman said he remained committed to starting flights ‘ by the spring’, despite opposition to legislation in the House of Lords. The Safety of

Rwanda Bill, which aims to overcome remaining legal hurdles to the plan – launched by Boris Johnson in 2022 – is currently stuck in the Lords.

The PM’s spokesman was unable to confirm whether Mr Sunak had formally accepted the bet and one of his allies said he was ‘not really a betting man’.

Mr Kinnock last night accused the PM of ‘splashing his cash around like it’s monopoly money – betting on a policy that he has lost control over’.

Meanwhile, the SNP claimed the bet was a ‘clear breach of the ministerial code’.

Mr Morgan said he would donate any winnings to a refugee charity.

In the interview Mr Sunak also acknowledged his pledge to restore economic growth was ‘on the wire’, and admitted his promise to cut NHS waiting lists had been derailed by ongoing strikes.

The PM said the Government had ‘not made enough progress’ in dealing with the backlog. Asked whether he had failed on the pledge, he replied: ‘Yes, we have.’

A pay deal for nurses and other medical staff was agreed last year but junior doctors and consultants have continued to strike.

Waiting lists are higher than when Mr Sunak’s pledge was made in January last year, with 7.21million treatments waiting to be carried out last month.

When the increase was put to the PM, he replied: ‘We have invested record amounts in the NHS, more doctors, more nurses, more scanners. But industrial action has had an impact.’

Mr Sunak went on to say betterthan-forecast growth meant the Government was now in ‘a position to cut taxes’, and hinted at giving police new powers to deal with displays of anti- Semitism after a recent rise following Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel.

The PM also criticised Greenpeace for a protest at his North Yorkshire home last summer.

Although he and his family were away at the time, he said he had found it ‘unsettling’, adding: ‘When your home is invaded in that way you feel very vulnerable.’

‘Splashing cash like monopoly money’