Sir Richard Leese cut into a live TV press conference to reveal the government had taken a £60m pot for businesses off the table in chaotic scenes as Greater Manchester entered a Tier 3 lockdown
Details of the government’s “disgraceful” cash offer for Greater Manchester emerged on live TV in chaotic scenes.
Local leaders discovered midway through their own press conference that a £60m pot, which had been offered for going into Tier 3 lockdown, had been taken off the table.
Instead Greater Manchester will only get a separate £22m pot for testing, tracing and communications – which works out at just £8 a head – which was on offer from the start.
The revelations cut off metro mayor Andy Burnham midway through an address to locals and the media, and left him visibly furious.
As onlookers booed and shouted “disgraceful”, he said: “This is no way to run the country in a national crisis. This is not right. They should not be doing this. Grinding people down trying to accept the least they can get away with.
“£22m to fight the situation that we are in is frankly disgraceful”.
