Keir Starmer outlines Labour vision of levelling up & Leamside line

Keir Starmer also said there was a “powerful case” for reopening the Leamside railway line, that runs through the centre of County Durham.

Keir Starmer doing media duties at the Beacon of Light next to Sunderland's football stadium

On the first day of the Parliamentary recess, Mr Starmer visited the Beacon of Light in Sunderland to see a crime reduction programme at work in the shadow of the football stadium, while Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Scotland where he announced two “green freeports” would be created, which sound similar to a freeport planned for Teesside.

“Freeports can be made to work and locally they can be very popular but I don’t think they are a silver bullet,” said Mr Starmer. “For levelling up, you need a strategic plan with infrastructure around it and money behind it. We haven’t seen that from the Government and frankly, 12 years in, they have produced a White Paper that was wafer thin, promising things you might get in years to come but with no money behind it. It is far too little and far too lacking in ambition.

“For every town, we need to sort out the transport problem – people feel they’ve got to get out to get on. We’ve got to put money into the local economies, and we’ve got to deal with the high street and anti-social behaviour.”

This may run to funding – estimated at £600m – the reopening of the 21-mile Leamside line from Ferryhill north to Washington, as called for by an all-party campaign.

“There is a very powerful case for this line,” said Mr Starmer. “I have listened very hard to what Sharon Hodgson (the Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland West) and others have said about it, and I believe business is fully behind it, so there is a very powerful case for the line.”

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer visits the Beacon of Light in Sunderland to see the work being done to reduce crime with the three Labour Sunderland MPs. He is pictured, from left, with Sharon Hodgson MP, Bridget Philipson MP, Northumbria police and crime commissioner Kim McGuiness, Foundation of Light CEO Lesley Spuhler, and Julie Elliott MP

Sunderland is now the thin red wall holding back the Tory tsunami which flooded through County Durham and the Tees Valley in 2019. The city’s three MPs remain Labour, with greatly reduced majorities, and Labour has an overall majority of nine on the city council – but with a third of the council’s 75 seats being contested in May, Labour will be hoping to strengthen its position.

“The first thing after 2019 was to demonstrate we are changing the party – we don’t say to voters ‘why didn’t you vote for us’, we say to our party that we need to change,” he said, “and we’ve been engaged in that change for two years.

“Just as trust is dripping away from the Government, it isn’t necessarily coming to us, so we need to earn every vote, and put concrete propositions on the table.”

In the food unit at the Beacon of Light, Mr Starmer met four 12 to 14-year-olds on the You Only Live Once programme who were learning how to make a chicken curry

On BBC Newcastle, Mr Starmer revealed he had received death threats following the Prime Minister’s accusation, which appears to be without foundation, that he had failed to prosecute the paedophile Jimmy Savile when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

“The PM knew what he was doing when he introduced that slur but this is not about me,” he said. “There are threats to too many politicians, particularly women, and we all have a duty to return to when we have strong debate and strong arguments but it is rational and done with integrity.”

Mr Johnson has, perhaps inadvertently, highlighted Mr Starmer’s role as the DPP and the Labour leader tried to turn that to his advantage when he visited the Violence Reduction Unit of Northumbria Police’s programme that is run with Sunderland FC’s Foundation of Light.

“I was the DPP for five years so I have first hand experience of prosecuting crimes,” he said. “I have seen the impact crime has on the lives of victims and also on the lives of young people which is why initiatives like this are so important. These are sometimes the one chance a young person has to avoid a life of crime and to get on, and I can’t tell you how impressed I am by it.

“Unfortunately, there has been a 66 per cent reduction in the budget for youth services and over the last 10 years there has been a 40 per cent increase in youth offending at a cost of £11bn to the economy. That is the legacy of this Government.”

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer visits the Beacon of Light in Sunderland to see the work being done to reduce crime. Pictured with Northumbria police and crime commissioner Kim McGuiness, Taylor Higgott (15) and Cameron Macintosh (15). Picture: CHRIS BOOTH

For all his many differences with Mr Johnson, Mr Starmer is alongside him over Russia’s military build-up on its border with Ukraine.

“Whatever other arguments I have with the PM, when it comes to standing up to Russian aggression, in the UK we stand together,” he said. “The Labour Party is unshakeable in our support of Nato. We are standing shoulder to shoulder with the Government on this because there is nothing Putin wants more than for Nato and its allies to be divided and for us here in the UK to be divided.”

Mr Starmer with female footballers at the Beacon of Light

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