Rishi Sunak admits taking money from deprived areas
Rishi Sunak has admitted taking money from deprived urban areas in order to give it to other parts of the country.
The former chancellor, who is standing to be prime minister, made the claim last month while speaking to Tory members in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
In footage obtained by the New Statesman, Sunak said: “I managed to start changing the funding formulas to make sure areas like this are getting the funding they deserved.
<p lang=«en» dir=«ltr» xml:lang=«en»>EXCLUSIVE: In a leaked video, Rishi Sunak boasted to Conservative Party members that he was prepared to take public money out of “deprived urban areas” to help wealthy towns.@REWearmouth reports: https://t.co/uZMpjKm6rG pic.twitter.com/07sSzDksMT“We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that.”
Tunbridge Wells has a Conservative majority of 14,645 and has been held by the party since the constituency was created in 1974.
An analysis by the Guardian in February found that some of the wealthiest parts of England, including areas represented by government ministers, were allocated 10 times more money per capita than the poorest under Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda.
The analysis brought together the four main levelling up funds for the first time. The Future High Streets Fund, the Community Renewal Fund and the Towns Fund have been fully allocated, while the levelling up fund has allocated £1.4bn with a further £1.8bn still to be announced. A total of £4.7bn has been allocated in England across the four schemes so far.
Lisa Nandy, Labour’s shadow levelling up secretary, said: “This is scandalous. Rishi Sunak is openly boasting that he fixed the rules to
Read more on theguardian.com
