The former Health Secretary said he wanted to offer a “down payment on the future of the next generation” by restoring the centres to the original New Labour model
Wes Streeting has pledged to bring back Sure Start centres to help families as he sets his sights on the Labour leadership.
The former Health Secretary said he wanted to offer a “down payment on the future of the next generation” by returning to the original New Labour model, focusing on children under 5 and greater outreach to get families through the doors. In a pitch to the left of the party, Mr Streeting wants to fund the move with a wealth tax, going after assets by equalising capital gains and income tax, which he says could generate up to £12billion a year.
Despite Keir Starmer insisting he won’t stand down, Mr Streeting has begun setting out his stall in Labour’s shadow leadership contest as rival Andy Burnham fights to return to Westminster through a by-election in Makerfield.
In his first newspaper interview since quitting the Cabinet last week, Mr Streeting said: “I sometimes feel like this Government has the right diagnosis of a problem, but then when it comes to writing the prescription, we end up, instead of giving someone surgery, we say, ‘Here’s some paracetamol.’
READ MORE: Andy Burnham live: Labour PM hopeful says ‘vote for change’ as MPs turn out to support Makerfield bidREAD MORE: 4 bits of bad news slipped out before recess – from Andrew files to pay update
“The biggest thing I think is broken in this country at the moment is that, for the first time in modern history, the prospects for the next generation are worse than the last.”
Sure Start was one of the successes of the last Labour government but the project was gutted by Tory austerity. This Government has rolled out Best Start Family hubs to build on the legacy of the scheme, which act as one-stop shops for families, mostly focused on early years but open to all families with children under 19.
The project has been backed by around £1billion in funding. But Mr Streeting said Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson needed to be given more than double the cash to get it back to the last Labour Government’s levels – around £2.7billion in today’s money.
Speaking to the Mirror in Hainault, in his east London constituency, he said: “It would show that this Labour government, and a Labour government I lead, is absolutely committed to building a better future for the next generation, making sure that kids, all kids, get the very best start in life, closing that gap that sees kids from poorer families arrive at school with their futures already determined, already disadvantaged from those from the more wealthier backgrounds.”
Mr Streeting, who grew up in a single parent family on an east London council estate, said he was horrified that kids today didn’t have the opportunities he did to get on. “I’m not one of these politicians that was born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” he said.
“The reason I’m sat here talking to you today as someone who served in the Cabinet of our country and ended up in Parliament rather than prison, where my grandparents ended up, is because I had the best start in life, in the form of a great state education, parents and grandparents who read to me and who brought me up to believe that I could be whoever I wanted to be.”
The Ilford North MP went on: “I just find it so profoundly shocking that in my lifetime, I’m 43, if I think back to the sort of opportunities I had as a kid, and the kids growing up in poverty in my constituency today – it’s a sorry, shameful state of affairs.
“This Labour government has started making a difference with things like your breakfast clubs and abolishing the two child limit, lifting kids out of poverty, but back to my prescription analogy, we’ve got the diagnosis, we’ve written half a prescription, we need to whack up the dosage.”
Mr Streeting dramatically resigned last week after a 16-minute Downing Street showdown with Keir Starmer. Lifting the lid on their talks, he said: “Having said those things to the Prime Minister’s face and told him directly that I’d lost confidence in his leadership, and I thought he needed to resign as leader of the Labour Party, and set out a timetable for a leadership election… I couldn’t then say, ‘Oh, okay, well, if you’re going to stay, well, I’ll just sit around the cabinet table and pretend nothing’s happened. I think that would have been both dishonest and dishonourable, so by the end I thought I had no choice.”
But he stepped back from triggering a leadership contest, prompting scepticism he had the 81 MP backers needed to launch a challenge.
He insisted he did have the numbers to launch a leadership bid, but claimed he held back to allow Mr Burnham to fight it out if he wins a Commons seat next month. He said: “We need all of our best players on the pitch. We’ve obviously got the Makerfield by-election underway – where Andy Burnham has my full support – and I suspect Andy Burnham would want to be a candidate in a leadership race.
“And I felt that if I’d rushed ahead and triggered a leadership contest before Andy Burnham had the chance to come back, people would have just said I was trying to pull a fast one, trying to get ahead of competition.”
Mr Streeting rejected the idea of calling a general election if he won a leadership contest, but admitted chopping and changing leaders like the Tories would be a challenge. He added: “It will be our responsibility to show that the change was worth it.”
He warned Labour risked handing Nigel Farage the keys to No10 if it failed to change course and accused Reform of sowing division by stoking tensions on immigration. He said: “The reason why people are struggling isn’t because we live in a diverse country. The nurse from Nigeria is not doing damage to the factory worker in Newcastle, and refugees have not caused the affordability crisis in our country.”
But he also took aim at his own side, saying the PM’s controversial speech where he said Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” exposed a “moral vacuum”. “We’ve got to take this on,” he said. “There is a level of racism in this country at the moment, which I have not seen in my lifetime.”
Last week, Mr Streeting exploded Labour’s Brexit tensions by suggesting Britain should one day rejoin the EU. He dismissed suspicions he had been trying to sabotage Mr Burnham in Leave-backing Makerfield, saying: “Both of us have said one day, and I emphasize one day, I’d like to see Britain back in the European Union, because I think leaving has been catastrophic for the country.
“Farage promised one thing and delivered another, so be careful before you give that guy and his people around him the keys to government. We lost one vote on one day to that man and it’s made us worse off as a country, less safe, less influential. So I’d like to see us leading Europe, not leaving Europe, and I make no bones about that.”
He said getting back into the EU would need a democratic mandate, and Labour would need to persuade voters of the case for reversing Brexit. “It’s not a light switch you can flick on and off,” he said. “This is something we’ll see over time rather than a big one off thing.”
Mr Streeting said Labour needed to stick to its manifesto promise not to rejoin the customs union or the single market, but signalled a different argument could be made in the run up to the next election.
In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Streeting also addressed his own ties to Peter Mandelson, the Labour grandee who was sacked as US ambassador over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He said: “I’ve been as transparent as I can be. Published a whole load of messages, I handed over everything that the Cabinet Office asked for, and I’m not going to pretend for a minute that I didn’t know Peter Mandelson.”
But he said the whole scandal had shown a “moral failure” in Government, where too much weight was given to Mandelson’s Trump whispering abilities over the victims. He said: “The culture at the heart of that scandal, which is of powerful people getting away with it, because too many people are prepared to look the other way.
“That was the moral failure of the Mandelson’s appointment, that is what we have to learn from, because it speaks to a much bigger story about sexism and misogyny. All of us need to learn from that. I’ve thought about it a lot.”