A Bolton MP has blasted the comments from former chancellor and contender to be Prime Minister Rishi Sunak about taking money from "deprived urban areas" as unacceptable.

Yasmin Qureshi, who represents Bolton South East, has said the words show the Conservatives had been "paying lip service to levelling up."

In a leaked video, Mr Sunak said in Tunbridge Wells: "I managed to start changing the funding formulas, to make sure areas like this are getting the funding they deserve because we inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone.

"I started the work of undoing that."

Ms Qureshi has blasted the comments.

She said: “The comments from the former chancellor Rishi Sunak on levelling up lays bare how the Conservative party have been paying lip service to levelling up since the 2019 election.

"The man who led HM Treasury and administered funding for various levelling up schemes has said out loud that he diverted money away from places like Bolton, this is unacceptable.

“It speaks to a wider issue however, that levelling up is a vacuous slogan with no real goal or measurable metrics.

"It is for Labour to own this concept and deliver the economic growth our country so desperately needs whilst addressing regional inequalities.”