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Boris Johnson refused to apologise for offensive comments he made about Muslim women and gay men instead defended his "right to speak out".

The Prime Minister insisted he had never intended to cause "hurt or pain" when asked about his history of making insulting remarks including saying women who wear burqas look like letterboxes and referring to gay men as "bumboys".

A member of the audience said to applause and cheers: "Racist rhetoric in this country is completely rife.

"Will you admit that you have personally contributed to this and say the words, "I'm sorry"?"

Mr Johnson said: "I've written many millions of words in my life as a journalist and I've genuinely never intended to cause hurt or pain to anybody."

He referred to an article he wrote last year where he compared Muslim women wearing the burqa to letterboxes.

But Fiona Bruce pointed out that he had made a number of offensive comments: "There's the Muslim women going around looking like letter boxes, you referred to tribal warriors with watermelon smiles, and flag-waving piccanninies and just to get another demographic in tank topped bum boys."

The audience scoffed after Mr Johnson said: "If you go through all my articles with a fine-tooth comb and take out individual phrases there is no doubt that you can find things that can be made to seem offensive and of course I understand that."

Referring back to to the article on Muslim women, he replied: "I defend my right to speak out. If you actually read the piece, I'm not sure how many people actually have, if you read the piece what I was actually doing.

An audience member shouted out: "which one?"

"I suggest you read any of them or all of them. What I was really doing was mounting a strong liberal offence of the women in this country to wear what they choose and not to be oppressed into wearing something they don't want to wear and I think most people in this country would agree with that.

"I've always stood up for gender equality."

Another audience member said: "You've just talked about defending the rights of women, you don't do that by taking down a religious minority you don't do that by insulting Muslim women."

While a third woman gave a brutal assessment of Mr Johnson's record.

She said: "I think the way that you speak about Muslim women in particular and the way that you've spoken about race in the past is completely characteristic of the way your government has dealt with all the issues it's come across since 2010. "

"It has been characterised by complete carelessness, by callousness, the way you've treated people through the DWP, the way you've treated the victims of Grenfell, the hostile environment.

"You say you've visited hospitals and spoken to public service workers.

"But I think you yourself know you haven't been welcome when you've been to speak to them.

"The way you've conducted yourself when you've been there has shown that you're afraid of the response, you're going to get.

"So I think it's insulting to the people who've suffered under your government, even if you say you've only been in power for 100 days you've been part of the government for the last nine years."

She said that it was "insulting" for the PM to talk about the investment he would bring when it was the Tory's austerity that had caused so many problems.