Lisa Nandy has criticised the Conservative Budget and says the lack of devolution for local authorities is preventing them from supporting their own local labour market.
Speaking to GB News on Camilla Tominey Today, Ms Nandy said: “Inspiration comes from people who’ve consistently in this country voted for change. They voted for change in referendums. They voted for change across the board. And what we want to see is the government make good on those promises.
“Yet in the Budget this week, which should have been a game changer, we saw just 9% of the population granted the power to take charge of their own destiny under new devolution deals. There’s a missing 90% there and Labour is determined that we’re going to deliver for those people.
“I think the evidence of the last 13 years shows that when we’re unshackled from this failing Tory government we can do far, far better. In fact, the evidence goes back further than that.
“Under the last Labour Government when we granted real power through regional development agencies to places like Grimsby and Rotherham, they developed a world-leading wind industry, they worked in partnership with business to bring advanced manufacturing to Rotherham.
“I think if you hand power back to people, they make good decisions and decisions that last. That’s what the government says, but that’s what Labour is actually going to do.”
Following the Budget announcement, Labour challenged one of Jeremy Hunt’s policies for removing the top threshold for the amount to put into a pension.
Ms. Nandy commented: “84% of the people that this helps are not doctors, and this is not just a sledgehammer to crack a nut; It’s a very expensive sledgehammer to crack a nut.
“It can’t be right that we spend a billion pounds on helping a majority of people with a tax cut, who are at the wealthiest end of the spectrum, where 99% of the rest of us are struggling to even put money into our own pensions and stay in work as a consequence.
“We think there are far, far better ways to use a billion pounds and we would reverse this cut. We would work with the government, if they were willing to do so, on a bespoke scheme and an alternative that ensured that we found a solution to the doctor’s problem.
“There are several of those solutions currently on the table, but instead the government has gone for a billion pound tax cut for the wealthiest people in the country; only a handful of people.
“What does it feel like to a paramedic waking up on Wednesday morning to hear that is the government’s policy when everyone is struggling?
“This is bad policy and bad choices. In the end, the government is about choices, and this government has not chosen 99% of us this week.”
Reacting to quotes by Labour leader Keir Starmer that immigration law has a “racist undercurrent”, Ms. Nandy said: “Well, I don’t know what that piece was or what the context was for it, but I can assure viewers that we do not believe – Keir Starmer does not believe and I do not believe – that immigration law is racist.
“What we want to see is an immigration system that actually works. Less of the PR stunts, less of the press releases, and more of the hard yards that it takes to stop the boat crossings, break the smuggler gangs and get our asylum system up and running again so that it can process people swiftly, grant asylum to people who have the right to be here and remove people swiftly who don’t.
“We think [the Rwanda plan] is absurd. The Home Secretary has handed over £140 million in checks to Rwanda and so far has nothing to show for it. This was a plan that was announced and pushed by her predecessor, Priti Patel. They’ve announced and re-announced it and today what we’ve got is an Instagram account rather than a workable policy.
“We think you should take that money, put it into the National Crime Agency to create a cross-border cell that disrupts the criminal gangs and sends the clearest possible message to those criminal gangs, that their behaviour won’t be tolerated and that we will bring them to account should they persist.
“Instead, we’ve had more and more of the tough talk from this government, and last year, the boat crossings hit a” record high of 45,000. It’s not working and it’s about time the government recognised that.”
Highlighting how those in her constituency of Wigan feel, she added: “During the EU referendum, one of my constituents said to me, ‘It’s all very well people saying that we should be grateful to people who work in our local hospital, who have come from all over the world to do so and we are, but she said my kids could just as well as think of going to the moon, as getting those jobs’ – and I think she was right.
“We’ve had 13 years in which we’ve pulled away the ladder for many young people in constituencies like mine. We haven’t taken seriously the need to invest in the skills of young people in employment and retraining support for all the people who are leaving the labour market.
“We need a long-term plan to actually skill up our workforce for the jobs that we’re creating, not just the sticking plaster of continuing to grant visas to people from other countries, who could be contributing to their own countries, to come here and fill those shortages.
“That’s why we’ve said devolve skills policy, devolve employment training and support so it can be far more flexible to the local labour market and give businesses much more flexibility over how they use the apprenticeship levy as well.
“We think immigration and skills go hand in hand, and immigration is no substitute for investing in the skills of young people in this country.”
