Election debate: reaction and analysis after Jeremy Corbyn and party leaders spar – as it happened

Q: The YouGov model suggest you will lose seats. Will you resign if that happens?

May says there is only one poll that matters, the vote on 8 June.

Q: Isn’t the truth about why you are missing the debate is that you think people will not like you?

No, says May.

She says she has set out what an election campaign should be about. It should be about going out and meeting voters.

Q: This morning you were in a seat the Conservatives are defending, and you are in one now. Have you given up trying to gain seats?

May says yesterday she was in seats the Tories hope to win. You have to visit both, she says.

And that’s it.

I will post a summary soon.

May is now taking questions from the media.

Q: [From Sky’s Faisal Islam] If you are so strong, and Jeremy Corbyn is so weak, why won’t you debate him tonight?

May laughs. She says Corbyn seems keen to be on TV a lot. She says she is more worried about preparing for the Brexit talks.

Q: Don’t you think public scrutiny is important?

May says she thinks it is. That is why she is taking questions from voters during the campaign.

She says she feels sorry for ITV. Corbyn snubbed their debate.

She says debates where politicians are squabbling amongst themselves do not do anything for voters.

Q: You haven’t said anything about the NHS. Will it be privatised?

May rules out privatisation. She says the government is putting more money into the NHS.

Q: If extra money is going in, why is it in such a crisis?

May says the NHS is facing more and more demand. There are nearly 2m more operations a year than in 2010. That is why money must be spent effectively. Record amounts of funding are going in, she says.

Q: House prices are too high. What would you do about that?

May says the government published a policy document on housing before the election. One idea is to ensure that when developers have planning permission to build, they actually do build. Another is to look at different means of construction, so that homes can be built more quickly.

Q: My MP in Chippenham has been very vocal about school funding. But my local headteacher is worried about the impact. What are you doing about this?

May says it is right to have a fairer funding formula. A document with a proposed formula has been published. That is subject to consultation. But the government has promised that no school will lose out in cash terms.

Q: Brexit is happening. I am pleased you are prime minister. But we have a lot of social problems too. What will you do about the rising tide of homelessness and food banks? I asked Tory canvassers about this. They did not give me a satisfactory answer.

May says the government is putting over £500m into dealing with homelessness, but says you have to tackle this in different ways. Partly it is about building more homes. And it is about tackling the causes of homelessness, such as mental health. She says the government is looking at programmes that intervene early. And it is also looking at rough sleeping, and how to tackle that.

May is now taking questions from workers at the factory.

Q: There is no doubt that, just as Churchill was needed during world war two, you are needed now. But I am worried you are going to take away our freedoms with your policy with regard to British viewers. People not involved in terrorism will end up being investigated. I have a problem with that.

May says she does not want to remove freedoms. Freedom of expression and freedom of faith are essential. But she wants to take action against those preaching hate.

This is about reinforcing British values, she says.

Theresa May is speaking at an election event in Bath.

She says that if people vote for any other party, they will be voting for Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister.

She says Brexit matters for the public services. The talks will start 11 days after the election, and we have to be ready for them, she says.

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Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, has come up with a good soundbite about Theresa May’s non-appearance in tonight’s TV debate, the FT’s Jim Pickard reports.

UPDATE: Here is Tim Bale, a politics professor, on Rayner’s soundbite.

The “conveyor belt” of testing that children are subjected to at school must be stopped because it is causing depression and self-harming, the Green party’s co-leader has said. As the Press Association reports, Jonathan Bartley, who was presented with his own SATs test results outside the Department for Education, insisted it was “time we turned our education system into a springboard for life rather than a diving board into stress and anxiety”. Bartley sat a year six key stage 2 English grammar, spelling and punctuation test, in which he scored 67 out of 70, to highlight the “burden” SATs place on children. He said:

What I was very surprised about was the anxiety the whole process caused me.

The process of being graded, knowing I would have to share my results, made me very stressed. If I feel like that, imagine how all our children feel.

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