Reform UK leader says party has not offered Tory MPs money to defect

Richard Tice: ‘Let me make it absolutely clear, no cash or money has in any way been offered.’ Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

Conservative MPs have not been offered money to defect to Reform UK, the party’s leader, Richard Tice, has stressed, amid claims that Lee Anderson was offered “a lot of money” last month.

Anderson, the MP for Ashfield and one of the Conservative party’s deputy chairs, was recorded telling Tory activists last month: “A political party that begins with an R offered me a lot of money to join them. I mean a lot of money, I mean a lot of money.”