The story so far…

FactCheck’s Patrick Worrall explains: 

Tories on course for seat lead SNP “avalanche” sweeps Labour aside in Scotland Crushing losses for Lib Dems Ukip surge fails to materialise

These are the scores on the doors:

Labour               127 (-30)

Conservatives        102 (+7)

SNP                  50 (+42)

Lib Dems             6 (-20)

Ukip                 1 (+1)

Others               19

The Conservatives are on course to be the biggest party, but are likely to fall about 10 seats short of a parliamentary majority.

Could there be another Conservative/Lib Dem coalition? Possibly, but the Lib Dems have lost 20 seats at time of writing.

High-profile yellow casualties include the business secretary, Vince Cable, justice minister Mr Hughes – who lost his Southwark and Old Bermondsey seat which he has held since 1983, women’s minister Jo Swinson, home office minister Lynne Featherstone and whip Jenny Willott.

Nick Clegg has avoided personal disaster by holding on to his Sheffield Hallam seat. But he has ominously said that he will discuss his position in the party further later this morning.

The Democratic Unionist Party – who have said they could work with either a Conservative or Labour government – have held their eight seats in Northern Ireland.

Labour have held on to one seat in Scotland – Edinburgh South – and the Lib Dems have held Orkney and Shetland. Otherwise it is all SNP.

Former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain said: “This is devastating for us in Scotland, where an avalanche happened and swept us aside.”

But Ukip have so far won only one seat, with Tory defector Douglas Carswell hanging on to Clacton with a reduced majority.

He blamed the electoral system for the fact that popular support for smaller parties has failed to translate into seats, saying: “Across the country about 5 million people will have either voted for Ukip or for the Green Party.

Those 5 million people will be lucky to get a tiny handful of MPs in the House of Commons.

“That failure to translate those five million votes into seats is less a reflection of how my party or the Green Party campaigned, rather it tells us how dysfunctional our political system is.”

In Thurrock, a key target seat, Ukip were forced into third place.