Rishi Sunak brags about taking taxpayers’ money from poor areas

Rishi Sunak funnelled money away from “deprived urban areas” to places such as Tunbridge Wells when he was in the Treasury, a video has revealed.

The former chancellor was filmed talking to Conservative Party members about how he changed funding formulas to benefit Tory-supporting parts of the country.

In the video, obtained by the New Statesman, Sunak gives a speech while campaigning during the Tory leadership contest in Tunbridge Wells.

When Sunak was in government the Treasury allowed councils to bid for a £4.8bn pot of “levelling up” money; deprivation statistics were ignored when the cash was granted

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“I managed to start changing the funding formulas to make sure that areas like this are getting the funding they deserve,” he said. “Because we inherited a bunch of formulas from the Labour Party that shoved all the money into deprived urban areas. That needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing