Starmer rounds on Tory efforts to level up UK’s left-behind areas
‘Full-fat devolution’ pledge by Labour leader, but he will not ‘turn taps on’ to aid councils.
IT is “unforgivable” the Tories did not follow through on their pledge to level up left-behind areas of the UK, Sir Keir Starmer said as he launched Labour’s local election campaign.
The Labour leader would not however commit to “turn the taps on” and help ailing local councils to fill their funding black holes.
Sir Keir also suggested the local elections were a chance for voters to send “another message” to the Conservatives, as he urged Rishi Sunak to call a general election.
Ahead of the May 2 council and mayoral polls, the Labour leader touted his party’s “local growth plan”, and suggested he favoured longer-term funding deals for councils if his party were to win power at a general election.
At the launch in the West Midlands town of Dudley, alongside his deputy Angela Rayner, Sir Keir appeared to praise the sentiment behind the Conservative’s levelling up agenda.
But he claimed the Government “didn’t do the hard yards” on the plan to reduce regional inequality, and suggested his party would drive a “fundamental shift” in politics through devolution.
He added: “My frustration of the past 14 years, but particularly since 2019, is that in saying levelling up, the Government was tapping into something real that people yearned for, but they didn’t have a viable plan. And they didn’t do the hard yards. That’s unforgivable.
“And we intend to turn that around and make sure that we can make that connection real and change places across the Black Country.”
Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove hit back at the Labour leader, saying: “Keir Starmer couldn’t be more wrong. We are the party that’s been leading on levelling up for years now.”
The Minister added that neglected areas had seen “an infusion of cash and a power surge” under the Tories and that Labour had “come with nothing new to say”.
Labour would bring forward a “Take Back Control Act”, Sir Keir said, which would give new powers to regional mayors over transport, skills, energy, and planning, a pledge he branded as “full-fat devolution”.
The Local Government Association, which represents councils across England, has warned they face a £4bn gap in their budgets over the next two years.
Pressed about whether Labour would seek to plug these shortfalls, Sir Keir said: “There is no playing political games on this, councils of all political stripes are struggling with the lack of funding they have had over a prolonged period and we need to turn that around.”
Sir Keir said there was “scope for different kinds of funding settlements”, pointing to longer threeyear deals for councils, rather than the current one-year settlements.
But he added: “I can’t pretend that we can turn the taps on, pretend that damage hasn’t been done to the economy, it has. The way out of that is to grow our economy and that takes me back to the plan that we are launching today.”
Sir Keir said on Sky News that councils would only be better funded “at the end of an incoming Labour government” and that it would not be through a “lump-sum cash injection”, but by “reducing the burden on councils” through measures such as curbing inflation and banning no-fault evictions.
He also said he had “full confidence” in his deputy as she continues to face questions about the sale of her council house, and the pair sought to portray a relaxed mood.