Question Time leaders' special: May under fire over NHS and education –as it happened

Here are the main points from the Question Time leaders’ special.

• Jeremy Corbyn virtually confirmed that he would not be willing to use nuclear weapons - but declined to say so explicitly. This generated his most difficult moment of the debate, as some audience members reacted angrily to his stance. Asked how he would respond if Britain was under threat from nuclear weapons, he said:

I would do everything I can to ensure that any threat is actually dealt with earlier on by negotiations and by talks, so that we do adhere to our obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I think the idea of anyone ever using a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world is utterly appalling and terrible.

Asked it he was saying he would “never ever, under any circumstances press the red button” to launch a nuclear strike, Corbyn replied:

I think we have discussed this at some length about the aspirations we all have. I do not want to be responsible for the destruction of millions of people, neither do you. Therefore we have to work for a world where they are not available and not used.

After the programme, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, said:

I thought it was really spine-chilling to hear Jeremy Corbyn announce that all Labour’s support for our nuclear deterrent, all Labour’s support for our armed forces was completely meaningless because when it came to the business of defending this country he wouldn’t do it.

• Theresa May said she called the election because she had “the balls” to do so. Asked if she regretted calling the election, she said:

In this job I do what I believe is the best for Britain. I could have stayed on doing that job for another couple of years and not called an election. I had the balls to call an election.

• May defended the government’s decision to cap pay rises for public sector workers by saying there was no “magic money tree”. Nurse Victoria Davey told her:

My wage slips from 2009 reflect exactly what I’m earning today. How can that be fair, in the light of the job that we do?

And a male nurse said: “I’ve had a real-terms decrease of 14% since 2010, so don’t tell us we’re getting a pay rise.” May replied:

I recognise the job that you do, but we have had to take some hard choices across the public sector in relation to public sector pay restraint. We did that because of the decisions we had to take to bring public spending under control, because it wasn’t under control under the last Labour government. And I’m being honest with you in terms of saying that we will put more money into the NHS, but there isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provides for everything that people want.

• May accused Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary of wanting to take the DNA of criminals off the DNA database. She said:

[Abbott] wants to wipe the records of criminals and terrorists from the DNA database. That would mean that we could catch fewer criminals and fewer terrorists.

Abbott used Twitter to say May was wrong.

And Abbott retweeted this.

• May defended her decision not to sign the joint letter with the leaders of Germany, Italy and France protesting about President Trump’’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change deal, saying she did not need to sign it because she spoke to him in person last night.

I haven’t [signed it] because I actually have spoken to Donald Trump and told him that the UK believes in the Paris agreement and that we didn’t want the United States to leave the Paris agreement.

• May appeared not to know that some UK aid funding has gone to North Korea. Asked by a member of the audience why the UK had given the communist country £4m, May said she did not know the details of that.

• May mocked the idea of a Corbyn government being dependent on the support of other parties. She said:

We have a situation at the moment where if Jeremy Corbyn was to get into No 10, he’d be being propped up by the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish nationalists. You would have Diane Abbott who can’t add up sitting around the cabinet table, John McDonnell who is a Marxist, Nicola Sturgeon who wants to break our country up and TIm Farron who wants to take us back into the EU - the direct opposite of what the British people want.

• May said she wanted to improve work capability assessments, which are used to determine whether people qualify for disability benefits. One woman told her:

The NHS is an absolute shambles for mental health at the moment. I have suffered so much over that year in part because of the work capability assessment.

Let me tell you, I am partially sighted, I have mental health problems and other issues. I went into my assessment and I was asked in detail about suicide attempts and I came out crying because I was so upset because of the way I was treated by that nurse. And she came out after me because she had forgotten to measure my eyesight. She found time to insult me by asking for all these upsetting details.

May replied: “I’m not going to make any excuses for the experience you had. That’s why I think it’s so important that we do deal with mental health.” She also said she wanted to take action to improve work capability assessments.

• Corbyn acknowledged that some small firms would have difficulty paying the £10 minimum wage, but said a Labour government would “work with them, either to give them tax relief or support in order to make sure the real living wage was paid but they didn’t close down as a result”.

• He said Ken Livingstone may face a further Labour investigation into alleged antisemitism after the election. Livingstone is currently suspended because of comments he made about Hitler and Zionism. A woman in the audience told Corbyn the fact Livingstone had not been expelled suggested Corbyn did not take antisemitism seriously. Corbyn said:

There is no place for antisemitism anywhere in our society and certainly not in our party. Members have been suspended if they have committed any remarks seen to be of an antisemitic nature. We have a process that is independent of me within the party which investigates these and makes a decision on it ...

[Livingstone] has been suspended and further investigations may or may not happen after the election. He is suspended from membership, but he is suspended so that investigation can take place.

• Corbyn insisted he deplored “all acts of terrorism”. When asked why he never regarded the IRA as terrorists, he said:

I don’t approve of any terrorism of any sort, any terrorist act of any sort. It only divides communities and kills people.

• He criticised May for not debating with him. In his opening remarks, he said:

I’m very sorry this is not a debate, this is a series of questions. I think it’s a shame the prime minister hasn’t taken part in a debate.

• He rejected a claim from someone in the audience that the Labour manifesto was “just a letter to Santa Claus”. He said it was “a serious and realistic document that addresses the issues that many people in this country face”.

And here is our main story.

That’s all from me. Good night.

The audience member who challenged Theresa May over her record of “broken promises and backtracking” during the BBC Question Time leaders’ special is chairman of Ukip’s youth wing at York University, the Press Association reports.

In a fiery opening exchange, Abigail Eatock told May that she had U-turned on her decision not to call an election and on her social care plans.

And she accused her of ducking debates with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was appearing separately on the programme after the PM refused to go head to head with her rival.

Soon after the back-and-forth, a Ukip source confirmed that Eatock was the chairman of Young Independence, the party’s youth wing, at York University, where the BBC1 event was being held.

The Times’ Matt Chorley has posted this excerpt from a Diane Abbott interview with Andrew Marr showing that, contrary to what Theresa May said, Abbott does not favour taking the DNA of criminals off the DNA database.

On Newsnight, Emily Maitlis has just said that Theresa May did not use the phrase “strong and stable” once tonight. Why not, she asked Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary.

Johnson said that May “emanated” both virtues.

And here is the official Conservative reaction to the Question Time leaders’ special. It is a statement from Patrick McLoughlin, the Conservative chairman.

Tonight was a clear demonstration of the choice at this election – the prime minister showed voters that she has a plan for Brexit, is in command of her brief, and was unafraid to take on the difficult issues.

Jeremy Corbyn wilted under pressure – he waffled on and on in meaningless soundbites without offering anything of substance. It’s obvious that Corbyn could not secure the good Brexit deal that is vital to protect our economy, meaning fewer jobs and more debt.

The only way to get a brighter future for our country is to vote for Theresa May on 8 June.

Here is the Labour party’s official reaction to the Question Time leaders’ special. It is from a Jeremy Corbyn spokesperson.

The Question Time leaders’ special showed there is a very clear choice at this election but again the British public were denied the opportunity to see a debate between the only two people who could be prime minister next week.

Jeremy outlined Labour’s plans to transform Britain for the many not the few. With a Labour government, students won’t be saddled with tuition fee debt, pensioners incomes will be guaranteed by the triple lock and winter fuel allowance, and 95% of taxpayers won’t pay any more tax.

Theresa May couldn’t defend her record and floundered on the lack of costings in her manifesto, what the cap on social care will be and where the money will come from to fund our NHS.

The prime minister won’t even debate in an election she called, how on earth can she be trusted to negotiate the best Brexit deal for the British people? She repeatedly said she wasn’t going to call an election but now she has, she doesn’t seem to want to take part in it.

The verdict from the Twitter commentariat panel is finished. It’s at 9.41pm, but you may need to refresh the page to get the whole thing to appear because I’ve been updating it.

Generally, the view seems to be that Jeremy Corbyn came over as warmer and more relaxed, apart from when he was challenged over whether or not he would be willing to press the nuclear button, when his implied unilateralism (he came closer than he has done recently to saying no, without being explicit) and his evasiveness clearly infuriated a section of the audience.

Theresa May was generally robust, and marginally more animated than when she appeared on the Sky News/Channel 4 programme on Monday, but she faced a barrage of hostile and pertinent questions and, with many of them, her answers were uninspiring or even sometime unsympathetic. (For example, by now she should have developed a better answer on why nurses haven’t had a proper pay rise and sometimes need to use food banks.)

Journalists are always on the look-out for the “killer blow” at events like this, but they are as rare as a unicorn and there certainly wasn’t one tonight. For my money, Corbyn had the better night (assuming people care more about public services than the nuclear deterrent), and if the programme attracted people who have not noticed how much he has improved in recent weeks, they will have been impressed. May was solid, and it is customary for PMs on programmes like this to face hostile questions about public services. May put up with this with good grace, but said little to enthuse wavering voters.

This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about the Question Time leaders’s special on Twitter.

From the BBC’s Nick Robinson

From the Sunday Times’ Tim Shipman

From the Guardian’s Matthew d’Ancona

From the Daily Mirror’s Jason Beattie

From the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg

From the Daily Mirror’s Jack Blanchard

From the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush

From ITV’s Carl Dinnen

From the Spectator’s James Forsyth

From the Guardian’s Paul Johnson

From Sky’s Beth Rigby

From the Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh

From HuffPost’s Paul Waugh

From the Guardian columnist Paul Mason

From the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire

From Business Insider’s Adam Bienkov

From the Observer’s Sonia Sodha

Q: Why will you spend so much on scrapping tuition fees when there are other things to spend money on?

Dimbleby says it will cost £11bn - a quarter of all Labour’s extra spending.

Corbyn says he had the offer of free tuition. He did not take it up. But he says in other parts of the world free tuition is normal.

And that’s it.

Verdicts, a summary and reaction coming up soon.

Q: A few months ago you said you would have a strategic defence review if you won the election. Why do we need one?

Corbyn says every government coming into power does one. There are key issues to look at, including cyber attacks.

Q: Why have you never recognised the IRA as terrorism?

Corbyn says he has deplored all types of terrorism, by the IRA or anyone else?

The man says they did kill a lot of people.

Corbyn says all deaths are wrong, and all killing is wrong.

The peace process was remarkable, he says.

Q: You say you didn’t support the IRA but you supported Hamas. How can we expect you go to into No 10 when you supported them?

Corbyn says he never supported them. You have to talk to people to have a peace process.

Q: You were talking to them when they were killing people?

Corbyn says the government was doing that at the same time. Ian Paisley was thrown out of parliament for saying so. In a peace process, you have to talk to people you do not agree with, he says.

Q: Are you saying you will never, ever, under any circumstances, press the nuclear button?

Corbyn says he has discussed this. I don’t want to be responsible for those deaths, he says. And neither do you.