Zia Yusuf slams BBC Question Time audience as not representing the country

Zia Yusuf has slammed BBC Question Time's audience as not representing the views of the country on immigration. The head of Reform UK's Department of Government Efficiency faced a challenge by a member of the studio audience not to blame immigration for every problem facing the UK in Thursday night's programme.

Joining host, Fiona Bruce, in Shrewsbury were Chief Secretary to the Treasury James Murray, shadow culture secretary Nigel Huddleston, columnist Annabel Denham, Green Party leader, Zack Polanski and Mr Yusuf. The businessman said members of the audience appeared "delighted" by immigration levels in Britain, adding "that's fine, genuinely great". But in an eight-word put-down, he continued: "This audience is not representative of the country."

At that point Bruce interrupted to point out the audience was representative of public support for Reform UK. Mr Yusuf said: "Many people in this country feel massively betrayed by the Conservative Party." He added that in the party's manifestoes in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 the Tories pledged to bring net migration down to the tens of thousands.

"Instead they left office with that number at over a million. Six million people arrived during their 14 years of government."

Responding to an audience member who showed support for migrant workers in health and social care, Mr Yusuf said the UK could re-staff every doctor and nurse with just a single year's net immigration based on the rate of the past three years.

He added: "There is currently an employment crisis for doctors in this country." Reform UK's former chair said it was a lie to state the NHS couldn't function without immigration, pointing to figures he cited as coming from the British Medical Association which show 50% of "homegrown, British" doctors in their foundation year do not have jobs to go to.

Immigration was the first issue debated by the Question Time panelists, following a question from the audience about whether shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick was right to say he didn't see any white faces during a visit to Handsworth in Birmingham.

His remarks were largely condemned by the QT audience, who urged politicians to do more to unite the country and end their divisive rhetoric.

Mr Huddleston defended his Conservative colleague, repeating Mr Jenrick's assertion he had been making a statement of fact and there were valid concerns about a lack of integration in Britain.

Mr Polanski acknowledged the anger of one man upset by Mr Jenrick's words, adding: "I think we should all be angry when we have 14 years of Conservative austerity that shut our libraries, shut our community centres and for them to say integration is a problem.

"How do you expect people to integrate if you've taken away their services?" He continued: "We need to make sure all politicians - all politicians - are speaking about migration in a positive sense.

"Of course there'll be people who have problems with migration. But their problems are that they can't get a dentist's appointment, because there's not enough council homes, because we've not invested in our communities. But none of these are problems of a black face.

"These are the problems of multi-millionaires and billionaires who haven't been taxed properly by politicians."

Mr Yusuf said there were "massive" issues about integration and Mr Jenrick was not the best exponent of the public's concerns given his past participation in government.

He added: "The Tories catastrophically mismanaged this country and as bad as this government are, nobody is more accountable for that than the Tories."