Angela Rayner visits York Outer to support Labour's Luke Charters

Angela Rayner was in the city to back Luke Charters’ campaign to replace Conservative Julian Sturdy as York Outer MP.

She urged ensembled Labour activists to “turn York totally red”.

Among those who greeted Ms Rayner were Rachael Maskell, campaigning to retain her York Central seat for Labour, the newly elected Labour York and North Yorkshire mayor David Skaith and former York Labour MP Sir Hugh Bayley.

Angela Rayner arrives in York (Image: Newsquest)

Speaking outside York College, Ms Rayner said Labour would help young people, particularly those unable to afford to buy or rent their own homes.

Speaking shortly after York St John University announced redundancies to deal with its financial problems, she said the way to help universities and other public services was to grow the economy.

That would then lead to more money being available.

She said the Conservatives had “crashed” the economy and that had economic growth stayed on the same course as it had when Labour was last in power, she said the country would have had an extra £70 billion to invest in public services. She also urged universities to work collaboratively,.

She confirmed Labour’s commitment to abolish VAT breaks for private schools, saying that they only catered for seven per cent of the country’s children and public sector schools, which catered for 93 per cent of children were desperately in need of teachers.

“We have got to get those teachers in the (state) schools and we have got to have investment in state schools,” she said.

Private schools could get money from their pupils’ parents, said Ms Rayner.

LUke Charters welcomes Angela Rayner (Image: Newsquest)

After the visit, Mr Charters said: “It is brilliant to have her at York College and a great boost for the activists.”

It would give them the energy to keep pushing for victory in the final weeks of the campaign, he said.

In a short speech to welcome Ms Rayner to York at the start of the short visit, he had spoken of Labour’s plans to fix the NHS.

In her initial speech, Ms Rayner had spoken of the need for “proper” jobs and attacked firms such as P and O Ferries which sacked their staff and then hired replacement staff at much lower wages.

She also pledged that Labour would abolish Section 21 “no fault” evictions.

Nine candidates are standing for York Outer including Green, Lib Dem, Reform UK, Yorkshire Party and independent candidates.