Keir Starmer has said Boris Johnson’s “repeated delay and incompetence” had cost lives and jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Labour leader called for new lockdown measures a 24 a day vaccine roll-out and for families to be “put first” in the response to the virus.
In the speech setting out some of Labour’s ideas to help families during the pandemic Starmer said the planned £20 cut to Universal Credit should be scrapped.
Starmer called on key workers to be given a pay rise and for low-income earners to be saved from council tax rises in England.
He also called on Johnson to give employers the right to put workers on “flexible furlough” to allow them to look after children while schools are closed, as well as extending support to the “excluded” 3 million workers who have no support.
Starmer said: “Working parents have been left once again to juggle childcare and work.”
“For those who can work at home, it’s difficult. But for those parents who can’t work from home or don’t have a partner to share the load, it can mean the difference between keeping their job or looking after their family. So the government should go further to support working parents.”
Starmer said the Tory government “isn’t just incompetent” but also “has the wrong priorities”.
He added: “They plan to cut Universal Credit – taking £1,000 a year from millions of families and pulling another 200,000 children into poverty.”
“This is the Government that gave Dominic Cummings a £40,000 pay rise, but won’t pay our carers a decent wage.”
Starmer called for daily press conferences from the UK government and for lockdown curbs should be put in place “as soon as possible”.
He said: “Even in the best of times, you can’t be indecisive in government. In the worst of times, indecision can be fatal. Every time there’s a big decision to make, Boris Johnson gets there too late.”
Starmer said the public needed to hear daily press conferences from Downing Street with the“stay at home message.
He added: “One of the problems we’ve had in the last nine months is the mixed messaging coming from the government, this made it so much harder. The vast majority of the British public will comply with the rules, will do what’s asked of them, but they need absolute clarity as to what those rules are."
