A BRADFORD Green Party councillor has said Conservative leadership candidate Rishi Sunak is "not fit to be Prime Minister" after a video emerged of him boasting to members that he had diverted public money out of deprived urban areas like Bradford to help wealthy towns.
The leaked video, filmed on July 29, shows Sunak speaking to party members in an affluent town in Kent.
The former chancellor told members in Royal Tunbridge Wells he would “undo” funding for deprived urban areas to help wealthy areas “get the funding they deserve”.
He also bragged about “changing funding formulas” to ensure areas like Tunbridge Wells, where the average house price is £530,000, benefit.
Sunak said: “I managed to start changing the funding formulas, to make sure areas like this are getting the funding they deserve because 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.”
The Green Party National Transport spokesperson Councillor Matt Edwards, who represents the Tong Ward, has slammed the Chancellor for bragging about creating a system where "taxpayers in large metropolitan areas – most of which are in the North are subsidising the most affluent areas of the country – most of which are in the South".
He added: "This government keeps banging on about ‘levelling up’ but Sunak has admitted to what The Conservatives have really been doing.
"Bradford Council has had its budgets slashed under the guise of austerity meaning we aren't able to deliver the most basic services or investment in public facilities.
"Taxpayers in Bradford have seen their council tax go up only to see services and investment slashed.
"Only last month I highlighted the scandal of Bradford Council only being able to spend £170,000 on Road Safety measures across the entire Bradford South constituency.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg. Bradford Council doesn’t have the money to improve, or even maintain our parks, resurface our roads or collect our bins weekly.
"Meanwhile, we have the man who has been in government since 2018 bragging that he's been rigging the system to make sure taxpayers in The North are subsidising the most affluent areas of the country, many of whom vote Conservative.
"This is an absolute scandal and shows he is not fit to be Prime Minister."
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