Levelling Up: Project Delivery

Lord Scriven Excerpts
Thursday 23rd November 2023

(1 year ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Penn Portrait Baroness Penn (Con)
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I am afraid I completely disagree with the noble Lord. There is a choice to be made about where that investment goes, and the Government have made the choice to invest in transport projects that will connect towns and cities within the north far better. It will deliver more improvements to more people faster than the continuation of further legs of HS2.

Lord Scriven Portrait Lord Scriven (LD)
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My Lords, is not the key finding of all this that centralised Whitehall one-off bidding is not the key to level up across this country?

Baroness Penn Portrait Baroness Penn (Con)
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My Lords, we deliver funding to local authorities in all sorts of ways. We are looking to deliver more funding to local authorities. That is why we are taking forward an approach of a single departmental settlement to those mayoral combined authorities in Birmingham and Manchester. We have a commitment to roll that out further to those areas that have directly elected representatives.