The Tories don’t have any solutions to London’s cost of living problems

London needs a plan for growth. By 2022 a city the size of Birmingham will be added to London’s population. No city can afford to expand so quickly and do it in a haphazard fashion. It demands careful consideration and investment to avoid an unplanned mess.

But in planning for growth we need to take all Londoners with us. This is a once in a lifetime chance to deliver an inclusive city. In which we hardwire tackling inequality into everything we do.

If we don’t, the housing crisis will get worse, the air will choke Londoners, we won’t create the jobs we need for all the capital’s residents and our transport system will collapse under the extra demand.

What it doesn’t need is more of the same. For all the gleaming new buildings and a skyline full of cranes, Londoners are struggling to pay their bills and put roofs over their heads.

Yet this isn’t inevitable. We don’t just have to shrug our shoulders. We have the power to do something different. But only if there’s the political will to do so.

But more of the same was exactly the message we saw last week from the Tories. Their blueprint for the city doesn’t even hide the fact the Tories are jumping into bed with the big property developers. There was no effort to address the challenges of inequality and deprivation. No attempt to keep the very poorest within touching distance of the richest, let alone narrow the gap.

You’d have thought the Tories would have learnt. Londoners rejected this same tired old approach in last year’s local elections. They saw through the Tory’s lack of solutions to the city’s cost of living problems.

Take Hammersmith & Fulham, once Cameron’s favourite council. The ruling Tories ejected for ignoring their residents housing needs, putting luxury developments ahead of real people’s needs.

It’s stunning how London has reversed five decades of declining numbers. We should be proud our great city is booming. But planning for growth brings new challenges.

The Tories want to just lie back and let the market run wild. Instead we need a vision for the city that’s for all Londoners. We should seek to shape and mould our city into something people actually want, rather than just tolerate. That’s inclusive, prosperous, generates and redistributes wealth, with all Londoners sharing in its success – not just a small privileged few at the top.

On housing, we need to build thousands more affordable homes every year. We need to make renting more affordable and secure, with three year tenancies as standard, and rent rises limited over that period. And we need to ban letting agents from charging rip off fees.

We need to tackle inequality and make work pay. Labour will increase the minimum wage to at least £8 an hour. We’ll offer tax incentives to London businesses encouraging them to pay the Living Wage. And we’ll guarantee a job for all young Londoners out of work for more than a year, and create thousands more apprenticeships across the city.

London’s transport infrastructure needs expanding. But not at the cost of the inflation busting fare rises we’ve seen under the Tories. London needs control of the commuter rail lines that come into the city so we can improve the frequency and quality of the services. Crossrail 2 and the Bakerloo Line extension are crucial, but we need to be even more ambitious if we are to keep pace with the city’s growth. And we need an end to the vanity projects like the cable car no one uses and the most expensive bus in the world.

We need a London open to new ideas, people and trade. This city is built on a thousand years of diversity and internationalism. What we don’t need is the growing isolationism of the Tories. Turning our backs on the world and our neighbours would be disastrous for this great city.

And we need a London with more control over its own destiny. Devolution leads to higher growth, more jobs, better services and more efficient government. Labour will devolve power and resources to different levels of London government, giving the city the greater control over infrastructure, housing, further education and back to work programmes.

I’ve not forgotten Tory attitudes to London in the 1980s and 1990s. Margaret Thatcher gave up trying to persuade Londoners to vote Tory, instead abolishing the GLC for daring to be run by Labour. When Labour returned London its citywide leadership by creating the Mayor, the Tories initially opposed that too.

So time and again, they’ve shown themselves unfit to run London. With their narrow vision for London, for the few and not the many. Instead, what the city needs is an inclusive vision for all Londoners. A plan for growth that tackles inequality and deprivation. And that’s what you’ll get with Labour’s vision.

Sadiq Khan is Shadow London Minister and Labour MP for Tooting