“Rather than apologise or pretend he meant something else, why doesn’t he do the right thing and undo the changes he made to those funding formula?”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was grilled at PMQs today for boasting about withdrawing funding from deprived urban areas and transferring it to wealthy towns instead.
Sunak, who made history by becoming the first South Asian Prime Minister, endured a tough debut appearance at PMQs, where he was also asked about the reappointment of Suella Braverman days after she was sacked for breaching the ministerial code and on non-dom statuses.
Starmer kicked off PMQs by congratulating Sunak on making history and becoming the first British-Asian PM, adding: “Britain is a place where people of all races and all beliefs can fulfil their dreams.”
He then turned to Sunak’s judgement, asking why having pledged to be a prime minister of integrity, he had reappointed Braverman who was sacked for breaching the ministerial code. He said: “With his first act, he appointed a home secretary who was sacked by his predecessor a week ago for deliberately pinging around sensitive Home Office documents from her personal account.”
Starmer asked if officials had raised concerns before her reappointment to which Sunak referred back to his earlier answer, saying that the home secretary ‘made an error of judgment but she recognised that she raised the matter and she accepted her mistake’.
The Labour leader said Sunak had done a ‘grubby deal’ because he was scared to lose another leadership election.
A video in which Sunak was filmed boasting about how he removed funding from deprived urban areas and transferred it to wealthy towns was made the topic of another question from Starmer who called on Sunak to now undo the formulas.
“Rather than apologise or pretend he meant something else, why doesn’t he do the right thing and undo the changes he made to those funding formula?”
Starmer also took Sunak to task for failing to abolish non-dom statuses that allow the wealthy to avoid tax. He told Sunak: “I don’t need to tell the Prime Minister how non-dom status works, he knows all about that. It costs the treasury £3.2bn a year. Why doesn’t he get rid of it?”
The only reply Sunak had to that one was await the chancellor’s fiscal statement.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
Picture: (Youtube screengrab)
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