Rishi Sunak Says His Family Had To Go Without Sky TV When He Was Growing Up

Rishi Sunak says his family did not have Sky TV when he was growing up so they could afford to send him to private school.

The prime minister was asked what he had gone without growing up in a pre-election interview with ITV’s Paul Brand.

It emerged last month that Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, are richer than King Charles.

Brand asked the PM: “What do you do day-to-day to make sure you’re still in touch with the kind of struggles ordinary people face? Have you ever gone without something?”

Sunak – who was educated at the elite fee-paying Winchester College – said his family emigrated to the UK “with very little”, meaning he was “raised with the values of hard work”.

Brand replied: “What did you go without as a child?”

The PM, who was educated at Winchester  said: “I went without lots of things because my parents wanted to put everything into our education and that was the priority.”

Asked what the Sunak family had to sacrifice, he replied: “All sorts of things. Like lots of people there will be all sorts of things that I would have wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have.”

Laughing, the prime minister added: “Famously, Sky TV. That was something that we never had growing up, actually.

“But my experience is obviously going to be what my experience was. What’s more important are my values and how I was raised, and I was raised in a household where hard work was really important.

“You had to work really hard and family was important, service to your community was important.”