Rishi Sunak and his family are “truly at home” in his Yorkshire constituency, the former prime minister’s wife has said.
Akshata Murty said the couple and their two daughters feel like they belong in North Yorkshire, where Mr Sunak is the Conservative MP for Richmond and Northallerton.
She said: “We’ve been living here now for 11 years… We feel incredibly lucky to live here, incredibly accepted in this community, incredibly proud in Rishi’s case, to represent this community.
“Our children… I think if you wake them up in the middle of the night, they’ll tell you they’re Yorkshiremen, and feel truly at home. And so I think we just feel like we belong here.”
Ms Murty spoke as the couple’s numeracy skills charity The Richmond Project launched a new guide for the summer holidays to encourage families to explore numbers on their days out.
The online resource features some of the couple’s favourite family destinations and includes six guides for attractions in London, aiming to encourage families to spot the everyday numbers in the exhibits and spaces, from counting the windows of an old castle to the length of a blue whale.
The latest addition has been Richmond Castle, which is run by English Heritage in Richmond, North Yorkshire.
Ms Murty said: “You have young kids, and you think, how do I entertain them for the summer?
“We developed a guide to some of London’s biggest attractions, but also to parks and streets, so even if you don’t live near a big museum, you can still practice your number adventures over the summer holidays.
“And we thought, given our charity’s name, we should also do something similar in Richmond. And where better to do it than at Richmond Castle?
“I’ve visited this castle numerous times with my children. They’re now almost 14 and almost 15 and a half, and they’ve been coming here since they were about five and three.
“There’s so many different ways you can look at a castle and make it a number adventure.”
Ms Murty said the couple wanted to show families how numbers can be “fun and accessible outside the classroom” through their charity.
She said: “Rishi and I really believe in the power of education to transform people’s lives. And that happens in a few different ways.
“We think numeracy skills alongside literacy skills, for example, are some of the building blocks that we all need to access life meaningfully.
“And so we have picked numeracy skills because they are building blocks and that’s where we think we can make a difference.”
Ms Murty added: “I think there are so many of us, young and old, across the country who have a certain anxiety with numbers.
“And we want to help bring about a change in that. We want to show that we can demystify numbers and do that in a way where people can use number skills in more aspects of their lives, whether that’s booking a summer holiday, and figuring out what budgets and discounts look like, or whether they are working and need number skills in their jobs or whether they are doing things in their home environment.
“We want everyone across the UK to have greater number confidence and reduced number anxiety.”
