European Structural and Investment Funds Common Provisions and Common Provision Rules etc. (Amendment) (EU Exit) (Revocation) Regulations 2020

Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the instrument. I have no disagreement with the redundancy of the revoked legislation, given that the funding has been agreed and is to be paid out for parts of the programmes that are yet to be completed—at least, that is the agreement, although, given that the UK may go back on the backstop details of the withdrawal agreement, I feel I should point out that one of the Commission’s general retaliations for misbehaviour is the retention of structural funds from an erring member state.

Leaving that aside, we are coming to the end of the EU structural funds and, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said, there is great anxiety about the replacement fund, the UK shared prosperity fund, and how closely it will replicate not just the EU funding but the matching national funding, and the method of calculation and distribution. It has often been a criticism that structural funds were cumbersome and expensive in their distribution mechanisms. I do not dispute that, but wherever I asked questions about it in the UK—that is the sort of thing that MEPs got up to—the answer I got back from the regions was that they preferred to have the funds allocated by the EU, because otherwise they could not guarantee getting the money from a Government of any stripe. That was probably true, and if getting the maximum bang for your buck is applied, as the Treasury has in the past, it does not favour the less developed areas. But that is potentially not how it is to be in the future. I believe I heard the Chancellor say that the methodology of funding more generally was to be looked at as part of levelling up. If that is the case, can the Minister categorically reassure us that the basis of need will be retained as the key feature?

My other question is: how granularly will the areas be looked at? I am very conscious of conflicting pulls here: when large areas are deprived, there can be cumulative effects, but it is also the case that highly deprived pockets within rich regions also suffer exaggerated effects. Can the Minister shed any light on that?