Rishi Sunak visits city but avoids some difficult issues

PRIME Minister Rishi Sunak tackled questions on the crisis in the NHS, council funding issues, the region's transport links and the problems facing Plymouth city centre and other South West high streets during a visit to Britain's Ocean City.

The PM, accompanied by city Tory MP Johnny Mercer, toured the MSubs submarine factory at Estover.

But Mr Sunak would not be drawn on specifics about Plymouth's disused airport or critical incidents at Derriford Hospital.

The Prime Minister repeatedly said how the Tory Government had a plan and was sticking to it. He criticised his Labour opponents for not having a plan.

This is what he had to say about the issues that came up: The future of Plymouth city centre, the high street and retail and hospitality

"All of us want our homes to be places we are proud to call home, but also places where we love spending time with our family, and our high streets and town centres are key to that, the beating hearts of all our communities. But this is a challenge of course as people's habits change, we all shop more online and that has meant we have got to evolve how we think about high streets.

"The things we are doing are first and foremost directly investing in high streets, so we have the Future High Streets Fund, the Towns Fund and the Levelling-up Fund, and multiple market towns, town centres and high streets across the South West have benefited from that investment.

“The second thing is to support those businesses directly. We are cutting their taxes, and the most important tax for them is Business Rates. Because we have been able to manage the economy well, we are giving all those businesses, retail, hospitality, leisure businesses, that make up such an important component of our high streets and town centres, all of them are receiving a 75% discount on their Business Rates bill this forthcoming year.

“It gives you a sense, when we say our plan is working and we want to cut taxes for people we actually are delivering on it.