Lisa Nandy slams Jeremy Hunt's Spring Budget for a lack of local support

“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.

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?

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.”

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