Sky News is organising a live head-to-head debate as part of the Conservative leadership election contest.

The two final candidates in the battle for Number 10 will take part in a live debate with a studio audience made up of Conservative voters at Sky's west London Studios.

This will be a major cross-platform national event broadcast live on TV and Sky News's various digital and radio platforms.

The programme will be available to all other media and presented by Kay Burley.

There are currently 11 confirmed candidates in the Tory leadership race, including Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Home Secretary Sajid Javid and International Development Secretary Rory Stewart.


Former cabinet ministers Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey have also announced their candidacies, as well as current housing minister Kit Malthouse and Brexit minister James Cleverly.

Other candidates could also join the contest in the coming days.

A majority of those who have already declared their campaigns are in favour of a televised leadership debate.

The race for Number 10 began when Theresa May announced last week she will resign as Conservative Party leader on 7 June.

She will continue as prime minister until the process to elect her successor is complete.

It follows Mrs May's repeated failure to convince enough MPs to back her Brexit withdrawal agreement, and the subsequent rejection of a new compromise offer - aimed at winning over Labour MPs - by her senior cabinet ministers.

Theresa May resigns - full statement

In the first stage of a Conservative leadership election, MPs put their own names forward as candidates - with nominations due to close in the week beginning 10 June.

In 2016, when Mrs May was elected, MPs also needed the nominations of two other MPs in order to be allowed to stand.

Tory MPs then vote in a series of rounds to whittle the candidates down to a final two, with the MP with the fewest votes in each round being removed.

Party officials hope this stage of the process will be complete by the end of June.

In the second stage, the Conservative membership is balloted on the two final candidates following a series of hustings around the UK to allow the party's grassroots to quiz the pair.

There are 124,000 Tory party members, according to the latest set of figures from March 2018.

The Conservatives hope to announce the result of the leadership election - and therefore the choice of a new prime minister - by the time parliament goes on its summer break, which usually occurs towards the end of July.

In 2016, Sky News hosted a head-to-head debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith as the pair battled for the Labour leadership.