Sir Keir Starmer interrupted by green protesters during speech about Labour’s education plans in Kent | Breaking News News

A speech by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has been interrupted by green protesters.

Sir Keir was midway through announcing his party’s pledges to overhaul education if they get into power, when a man and a woman – already on the stage – unfurled a banner, saying: “No more U-turns – green new deal now.”

One young activist was heard heckling the Labour leader for watering down his previous commitment to spend £28bn on its green prosperity plan – a u-turn that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves blamed on rising interest rates and the “damage” the Conservatives have done to the economy.

Another asked Sir Keir: “Which side are the Labour Party on?”, to which he replied: “We are on the side of economic growth.”

After further demands for “a green new deal right now” and for the leader to “stop making u-turns”, the demonstrators were led away from the stage.

Before continuing his planned speech, Sir Keir told the audience: “I think they may have missed the fact that the last mission I launched was on clean power by 2030, which is the single most effective way to get the green future that they and many others want.”

Labour has put forward five “missions” for government – including securing the highest sustained growth in the G7, making Britain a green energy superpower, building an NHS fit for the future and making Britain’s streets safe.

But today’s focus was on education, with a plan to “break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage”.

Sir Keir outlined five areas where he says Labour would introduce changes, namely:

• Boosting child development with a promise that 500,000 more children will hit their early learning targets by 2030 – introducing more health visitors in the community, expanding mental health access for new parents, increasing capacity in the childcare system and raising standards in early education to achieve it
• Giving children more confidence by providing every primary school new funding – paid for by removing tax breaks on private schools – to invest in speech and language classes to “help our children find their voice”
• Updating the “outdated” curriculum to get children studying a creative arts subject or sport until they are 16 and “cracking the code” on digital skills
• Changing attitudes towards vocational education by providing more access to post-19 training and introducing a “proper” national skills plan, led by a new body called Skills England
• Tackle “the soft bigotry of low expectations” by rewarding teachers committed to career in classroom, hiring over 6,5000 more in shortage subjects, and reforming Ofsted so inspections no longer lead to “a single world judgement” but a “whole dashboard”

The plans have been welcomed by the sector, but the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said “significant additional investment” would be needed to achieve the goals.

Asked by Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby if he would commit to further spending on education ahead of the general election, the Sir Keir said: “A Labour government always takes education seriously. It is now possible to compare these last 13 years with the 13 years under a Labour government and you can see the difference.

“Obviously as we get closer to the election, we will set out in even greater detail our funding. But we can’t hide from the fact we are going to inherit a really damaged economy after 13 years of failure.

“We also can’t hide the fact we are going to inherit public services that are on their knees and on their face after 13 years of neglect and we are going to have to take hard decisions.

“But we will set that out as we go forward, and hold in your mind just what the last Labour government did on education.”