Nigel Farage erupts as he's accused of bigotry in BBC debate: 'Open doors, everyone come!'

Nigel Farage hit back after he was accused of "bigotry" during the BBC's General Election debate.

Plaid Cymru's Rhun ap Iorwerth took aim at the Reform UK leader during a discussion on immigration.

He said: "Nigel Farage wants to make this an immigration election for his own self-interest, let's change the tone.

"Let's change the tone of the debate on immigration, too much of it is framed around frankly the bigotry of people like Nigel Farage."

An angry Mr Farage cut in: "Oh please is that the best you can do? Honestly."

The Plaid Cymru leader went on: "Penny Mordaunt can't stand up to Nigel Farage because she wants her party to be like Nigel Farage."

Mr Farage said: "They're the opposite!"

The Plaid Cymru politician added: "Angela Rayner can't stand up to Nigel Farage because of the shift in her party to the right. Plaid Cymru will stand up."

Throwing his hands in the air, Mr Farage then shouted: “Open doors, everyone come, benefits for everybody, lovely.”

The Plaid Cymru said: "Of course we need rules on borders. Wales controlled its own borders during Covid that's what countries do.

"But we need proper processing of asylum applications, we need to stop the vile and expensive Rwanda flights, we need safe passage into this country and we need to realise that we need immigration for the interest of our health system, our care system and our economy."

The moment came after a question from an audience member about whether immigration was fuelling the housing crisis.

Mr Farage said: "I'm on a platform tonight with six other people whose parties have been wholly unconcerned on the issue of immigration.

"From the end of the 1940s until Mr Blair got to power, listen to the numbers, you probably don't know them.

"For 50 years net migration into Britain was 30,000 to 40,000 a year. Then Tony Blair gets in, decided to open the doors, we get net migration for the period of the Labour government of 2.7 million people.

"Then we get the Conservatives elected in 2010, 2015, 2017 telling us they'll reduce net migration to tens of thousands a year, 4.3 million the Conservatives have let in.

"Most of those that come in are not directly productive members of the economy, most of those that come in are actually dependents.

"The truth of it is this ought to be the immigration election because whether we talk about housing, the fact that rents are up, the roads, infrastructure.

"We are living through a population crisis, an increase of 10 million people since Mr Blair came to power.

"Frankly it's making us poorer, it is diminishing our quality of life. It's nothing to do with race or any of those issues, it's to do with actually putting the interests of our communities first.

"We need to get net migration down to an even figure for the next few years and maybe then we can hope to catch up with housing, with health and many of those things."