Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Charlotte Nichols and Guy Opperman(9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Guy Opperman
Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I was at the launch of the said report and have read it. He will be aware that, for example, one reason for the complications is that the number of people working from home has increased by 40%. We have a plan to tackle that with the record investment that is being made to Mayors. He talks about franchising, but it is also the case, without a shadow of a doubt, that he does not have a plan to finance it, particularly for rural local authorities. What is the case is that, when Labour organisations are challenged on this, they struggle to find out how they will deal with the funding. The truth is that there is no plan and they are not putting forward any funding. Individual people who attended that event were genuinely in shock at the shadow Secretary of State’s suggestion that Labour was going to do this, but was unsure about how it would fund it.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)