The leader of the Liberal Democrats says she is sorry for her voting record on austerity, and that she deeply regrets supporting the bedroom tax.

In an interview with Metro.co.uk, when asked if she regretted her support for austerity policies while she was a minister in the coalition government with the Conservative Party, Jo Swinson said she accepted the her party didn’t win every battle and that she thinks the bedroom tax was totally the wrong thing to do.

She said: ‘I don’t think we got everything right.

‘I absolutely regret that we didn’t win more battles in coalition.’

When asked why she personally didn’t vote against the policies at the time, Ms Swinson said it was because of ‘collective ministerial responsibility that she was unable to’.

In a wide ranging interview with Metro.co.uk, Ms Swinson also denied any wrongdoing by the party after claims made by OpenDemocracy that the Liberal Democrats ‘sold voter data to the Remain campaign in 2016 for almost £100,000’, while Tim Farron was leader.

It is alleged that the party sold the data to the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign .

Ms Swinson said she ‘categorically denied’ there was any wrongdoing.

She said: ‘What was done, was that voting lists that we have access to, the campaign operation have access to, we basically processed that data.

Ms Swinson added: ‘It was not selling individual’s data’.

The Lib Dem leader also conceded it was unlikely she would be prime minister, after successive polls showed the party’s support falling, saying ‘it was a job she would love to do’, but that ‘under current circumstances’ it didn’t look like happening.

Challenged on claims that her party had produced ‘misleading and deceptive’ leaflets designed to look like ‘local newspapers’, after giving campaign literature names such as Streatham Brixton, Ms Swinson insisted there was no attempt to ‘mislead’.

The MP for East Dunbartonshire said it was producing engaging content in the style of a newspaper and ‘different people liked reading different sorts of things’.

She refused to say whether she would resign as leader of the party, even in the event it lost seats, saying: ‘I’m continuing as Liberal Democrat party leader’.

Ms Swinson added she had been elected as leader by a significant majority of party members, with more members than the party has ever had before.

Asked about addressing the BAME pay gap, she said that she would support the mandatory publication of BAME pay gap figures for big companies and that many had got ‘complacent’ over the scale of the inequality.

However, Ms Swinson stopped short of calling for an outright ban on unpaid internships, saying they had to be looked into in further detail and that she supported naming and shaming employers who didn’t pay the minimum wage.

She added that in many cases unpaid internships were in ‘breach of minimum wage laws’.

On Brexit the Lib Dem leader said she refused to accept the argument that cancelling the result of the referendum for which 17.4 million people voted for, would be undemocratic.

Ms Swinson said that the party had been very clear where it stood on the issue and should it win the election, that would give it a democratic mandate to stop Brexit.

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