Exit poll predicts hung parliament

BRITAIN is heading for a hung Parliament with the Conservatives the largest party, according to a BBC/ITV News/Sky News exit poll.

The poll gives the Tories 307 seats, Labour 255 and the Lib Dems 59.

The BBC/ITV News/Sky News poll interviewed 18,000 voters, who had already cast their ballot, at 130 polling stations across the UK.

More than 44 million people were registered to vote for the 650 MPs of the new Parliament, with polling stations open from 7am until 10pm. Voters were also electing councillors in 166 local authorities across England.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson admitted that the Tories “seemed to have done very well’’.

But he stressed that the parties would have to look at the “will of the British people’’ before forming any coalition.

Mr Johnson told Sky News: “We’re at the scale of a hung Parliament territory where the Tories seem to have done very well.

“We’ll need to see. It sounds like our vote’s held up and the Liberal Democrats - the air was coming out of the tyre, it’s gradually seeped out from that first debate. I’ve got no problem with deals and coalitions and all the rest of it. But it has to be in the right circumstances.

“We have to respect the will of the British people.”