Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It was not just councils that put time and money into these bids; local people put their heart and soul into developing their community’s submissions, only to find that their bid would never have been allowed to win, that their time had been wasted and that they had been taken for fools. The Minister does not seem troubled about wasting Members’ time, and certainly not local authorities’ time, but surely she will apologise to those volunteers.

[Dehenna Davison]

I have already expressed my admiration for the incredible work put in by local government officials, volunteers and Members across the House, and I have apologised—the hon. Gentleman can read the Select Committee transcript for himself.

I need to make the point that we had £8.8 billion-worth of bids for round 3 of the levelling-up fund and only £2.1 billion to allocate, which unfortunately means difficult decisions had to be made. We are not a Government who shy away from making difficult decisions, and my own county council unfortunately faced a detriment, too. Ultimately, in line with the decision-making framework outlined in the technical note, we were keen to ensure geographic spread so that the most areas possible benefited from the levelling-up fund across rounds 1 and 2.