BBC chair Richard Sharp will ‘have to go’ if found to have broken appointment rules, says Labour – UK politics live

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Douglas Ross has denied ever recommending tactical voting, despite using an interview with the Daily Telegraph to urge people to get behind whoever is the strongest candidate in their area to beat the SNP.

The Scottish Conservative leader’s interview caused consternation in his own party last month. He told the paper:

I will always encourage Scottish Conservative voters to vote Scottish Conservative. But I think generally the public can see – and they want the parties to accept – that, where there is the strongest candidate to beat the SNP, you get behind that candidate.

Within hours, a Tory spokesman in London said it was “emphatically not” their position, while a report in the Scotsman quoted senior Tory MSPs saying they were not consulted about the comments.

Ross is expected to use his conference speech on Friday to tell party members the best way to beat the SNP is to vote Conservative. Speaking to the BBC on Friday, he claimed never to have backed the idea of tactical voting. Asked if he wanted Tory voters to back Labour in some seats to remove the SNP, he said:

No, and I’ve never said that. In fact, the words I used were exactly the same words the prime minister used in his interview with the BBC yesterday, I’m Scottish Conservative leader and I will always encourage people to vote Scottish Conservative.

We know in many seats that Scottish Conservatives are the best-placed party to beat the SNP.

So at the next next general election, which is coming next year, if people want to send a message to Humza Yousaf to say concentrate on the real priorities of people across Scotland, not your obsession with another independence referendum, vote Scottish Conservative so we can beat the SNP.

BBC chairman faces calls to quit ahead of report

Richard Sharp “will have to go” from his role at the BBC if he is found to have broken the code for public appointments by facilitating a loan for Boris Johnson, a senior opposition figure says. The shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh told Sky News:

If it is revealed that he has failed to declare the details of this loan arrangement properly or failed to be forthcoming in the process, then of course he will have to go.

A report investigating the matter is expected to be released on Friday morning, and Haigh said an independent panel to look into the issue of public appointments has been established in the opposition. She added:

It’s been really concerning to see how the government has sat back and done very little about the potential breaches in the process, and did nothing to help restore trust and faith in the impartiality of the BBC.

I think his whole saga raises wider issues around the way that the government has approached the BBC and the particular links of the Tory party with the BBC.

Elsewhere today, the prime minister Rishi Sunak will claim his Conservative government in Westminster is delivering for Scotland and the whole of the UK, while accusing the SNP administration at Holyrood of focusing on “constitutional abstractions”.

And the Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross looks set to use his conference speech to row back on previous comments suggesting a push for tactical voting to unseat the SNP in Scotland.