The publication of opinion polls should be banned in the last two weeks of a General Election campaign, according to Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris.
His comments came after he was asked about a poll that suggested that the Tories have lost a third of voters and whether the Prime Minister has made an error of judgement over the election betting scandal.
He told GB News: “Let's wait and see on the fourth of July how people will actually vote. There are plenty of polls available that say all sorts of different things...
“Polls are polls and I'm not even convinced we should have them allowed for polling in the last two weeks of an election campaign, but that is my personal opinion.
“We have got to make sure that we get our message across…we've got headlines that we didn't need to get because we shouldn't be talking about how we want to lower taxes for people after we've come through Covid and the war in Ukraine and higher energy prices when we supported people.
“We're now in a better state, the economy is much better, inflation is down to 2%. There's a hope that people's mortgages will drop and therefore people have more money or you get Keir Starmer’s Labour that just wants to tax more.
“As night follows day, Labour will increase your taxes and they won't say what they're going to do on Capital Gains Tax, on Inheritance Tax, a whole range of different taxes…”
He added: “The question I heard was about the polling and where Conservative voters have gone and I don't think they've actually gone that far.
“They just need persuading to vote Conservative and I believe we'll see all sorts of different results on the election day. I think you'll see incumbency come through for political parties of all types where they've got good MPs.”
On the betting scandal, he said: “The Gambling Commission are looking into the betting scandal, they've issued a statement over the weekend that says they're investigating it, they are not going to confirm or deny names, and they're not going to comment further while the investigation goes on.
“Rishi Sunak has said himself that if anybody is found guilty in that investigation, they’ll be thrown out of the party. I don't think it can be much clearer than that.”
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