Oral Answers to Questions

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the way in which she couched her question. I take this opportunity to thank the First Minister of Scotland who, in his visit to a synagogue in Edinburgh last week, I think spoke for all of Scotland in expressing his solidarity with the pain being felt by Scotland’s Jewish community. I look forward to working together on a cross-party basis if we can.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

T9. The new Levelling Up Minister has got off to a flying start by awarding £20 million to Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan. Barry is Wales’s largest town and has been ignored by the Welsh Government for decades. What reassurance can my hon. Friend give me that local priorities will determine how that money should be spent?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is a persistent champion of Barry in his constituency. I am delighted that Barry has been chosen as one of the 55 towns and will receive £20 million to deliver its plan. I look forward to working with him to see Barry’s potential realised.

Draft Business and Planning Act 2020 (Pavement Licences) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 General Committees

[Sarah Owen]

None of us is laughing about this, but one of us is ignoring the problem that those groups are raising. We all agree that there is a serious problem with A-boards and pavement licensing: the lack of consultation and information about the impact. The right hon. Member asked me what my solution would be, and I would want to see what impact the regulations have on people, particularly those who are disabled. Right now, we are not being given that information, so we are having to take this decision without the information in front of us. I would be able to make a much more informed decision if I had the information, but, surprisingly, for now, I am not in government.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Maybe the hon. Lady could help us by telling us why the Welsh Government have not pursued an impact assessment, because Labour is in government in Wales.

Draft Building Safety Act 2022 (Consequential Amendments etc.) Regulations 2023

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 General Committees

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that question. That will be in subsequent gateways and a subsequent part of what the Building Safety Regulator does. We are introducing a succession of regulations and statutory instruments, and on top of that, the Health and Safety Executive, which is where the Building Safety Regulator sits, will provide further information and guidance, and so on. That is a very important question, and the answer will become clearer in the coming months. If the right hon. Gentleman has any remaining concerns or suggestions from his experience, I will be happy to consider them and pass them back to the HSE.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

The right hon. Member for Leeds Central makes some important points, but as the Minister introduces further guidance associated with the regulation, will he agree to work with the industry to ensure that the additional red tape that is necessary to meet the safety needs does not inhibit business development and the construction industry adversely, adding costs well in excess of what was envisaged? Will he work with industry to come up with novel solutions in respect of how to meet the need, but not at an adverse cost?

[Lee Rowley]

My right hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. We have to ensure that the regulations are effective in solving the problem, which manifested itself in such a tragic way a number of years ago, and that they do so in a way that ensures that we still build and that developers can still bring forward the houses that we badly need for the next generation. We have started that process. A couple of a months ago, I spoke at a conference convened by the Health and Safety Executive—where there were nearly 1,000 people from the industry, regulators and local councils—to make sure that that conversation is under way. We need to continue that and ensure that there is clarity on that issue.

The purpose of the regulations is to align the Highways Act 1980, the Clean Air Act 1993 and 13 local Acts with the terminology and processes that will be established when section 33 of the Building Safety Act is enacted. Provisions in the Highways Act that relate to the payment of charges for street works when building control plans are deposited are amended to refer to the new system for building control approval.

Section 16 of the Clean Air Act is also amended. That section requires local authorities to check the height of proposed chimneys to ensure that they are tall enough to prevent smoke and particulates from becoming prejudicial to health. The changes replace references to the deposit of plans with, again, references to the new process for building control approval. Similarly, 13 local Acts are amended to do the same. Of those local Acts, 11 contain provisions relating to appeals to the magistrates court. To align the Acts with the new procedure for appeals, the provisions are amended to direct those appeals to the first-tier tribunal.

This instrument also contains a transitional provision to ensure that consequential amendments do not apply to plans for building work that were deposited before the date on which the regulations come into force.

I say to the right hon. Gentleman for Leeds East—

Levelling-up Fund Round 2: Bidding Process

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Anne McLaughlin]

It is a scandal. That is exactly what I am saying because that is exactly what we were told and the explanation the council was given. At a time when local authorities are feeling the financial strain more than ever, it was just wrong and, frankly, cruel.

For Glasgow City Council, funded by the Scottish Government—a Government who, unlike this one, have to live within their immediate means and, unlike this one, have to provide a balanced budget—the financial flexibility simply is not there. Glasgow City Council also has other financial pressures, unique to the city, in that when the SNP was elected it finally settled the previous Labour council’s decade-long equal pay dispute with mainly female employees. That was absolutely the right thing to do and I am extremely proud of my SNP councillor colleagues for that, but it was a massive bill that Glasgow will be paying for years to come.

The council was already in an extremely tight financial position because the Scottish Government are in a tight financial position, and that position was even tighter because it is paying the price for the previous council’s 10-year battle with women workers. The council was doing the best it could with the resources it had. Let me say to everyone here that Glasgow City Council’s work is regularly replicated around the UK because it runs some inspirational programmes despite financial constraints. However, given those additional constraints, it was even more galling to see the UK Government wave the carrot of levelling-up funding in front of our noses, only to snatch it away at the last minute.

I said that I do not agree with the way the funding is awarded. Forcing councils to compete against one another is a terrible way to distribute finance that should, by rights, just be given to local authorities to address local problems. Of course, the possibility of securing much-needed investment could not be turned down, so the work was done, and the bids were submitted in good faith.

Glasgow had some fantastic bids. We know this, not because we have seen them—although we have—but because our council officers were told as much by UK civil servants. Until the night before the announcement, the discussions were about which of them were most likely to be successful. I would like the Minister to explain to us exactly what happened in the 24 hours leading up to the final decisions being made.

My own constituency’s bid was for the regeneration of Saracen, Stonyhurst and Allander Streets in Possilpark, creating an urban park and building on the excellent work of the community-led business improvement district. To me, that is the epitome of levelling up—working with communities to build economic prosperity and resilience in areas of deprivation to support and develop what these communities have already started themselves. It is about supporting their empowerment. Instead, Possilpark has been discarded. The people of Possilpark deserve better.

The bid for Easterhouse, another area of Glasgow with historical and generational inequality, was for an incredible project that would have redeveloped the local shopping centre and public realm, not only linking the college and social enterprise hub but improving active travel routes and access to and the promotion of the wonderful Seven Lochs wetland park. It would have been a much-needed boost to the area, which was, statistically, the worst impacted by covid in the whole of Scotland. Again, Easterhouse and the people of Easterhouse were discarded. Again, I say that the people of Easterhouse deserve so much better.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

In view of the fact that economic development is generally a devolved function, why do the Scottish Government not fund such an important project?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Can I have a little longer to explain this to the right hon. Gentleman? The Scottish Government have a fixed budget. It is fixed by his Government. They decide how much they can spend. As I said earlier, they have to live within their immediate means. If we look at Possilpark, money has been—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to be listening to my answer, so why ask the question in the first place? Money does go in from the Scottish Government. If he is suggesting that Scotland is not eligible for this levelling-up funding, that is a different question. Maybe the Minister will confirm that we are eligible for it, because it is our taxpayers’ money as well.

[Alun Cairns]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate and I hope to have the opportunity to make the case for my constituency a bit later. To respond to her specific points, does the Scottish Government not have tax-varying powers? This is quite obviously an exciting project but, by the sound of what the hon. Lady is saying, it is not sufficiently important for the Scottish Government to fund it in Glasgow.

[Anne McLaughlin]

That is utter nonsense. I am not going to repeat what the right hon. Gentleman just said. Lots of funding is going into both areas. That is our taxpayers’ money as well. Why should the Scottish Government increase taxes—they cannot do it in year—when we have already sent the taxes down here? We are supposed to get some of them back; we are supposed to get more of them back than we have been. Incidentally—this is turning into a response to the right hon. Gentleman, although I am not sure he is listening—the people of Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in Europe. If we had stayed in Europe, almost double what was available in the levelling-up fund would be available to the whole of the UK. I think he needs to think about what he is saying; I think he is well aware of what he is saying and the implications.

Then we look at who got the funding. While my constituency and other Glasgow constituencies got nothing, the Prime Minister’s wealthy constituency was awarded £19 million. It simply exposes the lie of levelling up for what it is—just another way for the Conservatives to funnel public money to their own pet projects. The idea of spreading the funding evenly around the UK is somehow a fair way to do it is total nonsense. To properly address inequality and deprivation, we have to do more than just throw a few pounds at communities every once in a while. We need to pump money and support into the places that need it, and we need to do it again and again. That takes a level of courage and conviction that the Westminster Government simply are not showing.

That got me thinking that perhaps we are not all on the same page and that the Government have no desire to address underlying inequality and deprivation. I wondered why, and I can only conclude that the UK Government blame the people and communities living with serious levels of deprivation for that deprivation. Do the Government have an ideological belief that it is somehow the fault of the people in those communities, and that they should just leave them to it? I do not know what other conclusion can be reached.

Let me be clear where we in the SNP stand: the systemic problems at the heart of too many of our communities, including Possilpark and Easterhouse, stem from the contraction of people’s incomes and the erosion of the social safety net after 13 years of Tory austerity. The Tory Government are to blame, not the people themselves.

The leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken, wrote to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to set out just how bad a deal it has been for Glasgow as a whole. She pointed out that only 3.7% of the funding allocated to Scotland was received by Glasgow, but that if that had been based on population size, it should have been three times as much. Councillor Aitken goes on to say that, had the allocation been based on the proportion of people living in deprivation, it would have been an eye-watering 15 times as much. That was the criterion for EU funding, which the levelling-up fund was supposed to replace when we were dragged out of Europe against our will—as I said.

I will end by asking four questions. The Minister should bear in mind that the officers and councillors of Glasgow City Council, Glasgow MPs and MSPs and, most importantly, the people of Glasgow are all waiting for the answers. First, why were we and others told to submit bids and then told that we were not eligible, because we had had a small amount of funding in round 1? Secondly, what is the thinking that says divvy it up equally, despite the fact that people and communities do not live equal lives? Thirdly, will there be a round 3 and, if so, how can we be sure that there is a point to committing the time and money it will take to bid for it? Finally, will the UK Government reimburse Glasgow City Council the estimated £500,000 cost of submitting bids that it could not possibly win, or are the people of Glasgow expected to pay for that themselves?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) on securing this debate. I am extremely disappointed that Barry Making Waves—a proposal for a marina in Barry—was not successful. Although disappointed, I remain determined to ensure that it is successful in the next round of funding.

I will defend the policy, because when I was Secretary of State for Wales I had a part in shaping the objectives of the successor to European funding. I did that with parts of the country in mind that had been ignored for far too long, and that includes eastern parts of Wales and my constituency. The policy’s objective is right, in that it seeks to support those communities that have been left behind. The policy’s outcome may need further explanation to clarify and highlight why some communities have been successful or not.

Having investigated, spoken to colleagues and worked with my Labour-led local authority to clarify why Barry Making Waves was not successful, it is clear that officials will have scored each individual project. Clearly, my project was not successful, although other neighbouring projects were, so when it is suggested that there is a party political motive in supporting individual projects, that does not stack up credibly.

[Anne McLaughlin]

rose—

[Jon Trickett]

rose—

[Alun Cairns]

I will give way in a moment.

That does not stack up credibly, because my seat, and others I can point to, would have been successful on those grounds, and that would also give rise to a judicial review. So it is obvious that these applications would have been scored according to the policy’s objectives, and officials would have dealt with them individually, rather than according to the party political motive that has been suggested.

The question I will pursue in my contribution is how we can learn the lessons from not having been successful in this round—like the schemes that were unsuccessful in round 1 but successful in round 2. My authority did not bid in round 1 and was unsuccessful in round 2, but it certainly plans to submit an amended scheme in round 3. I want to develop this argument a little further, but I will give way to the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) , as she was very kind and generous in giving way to me.

[Anne McLaughlin]

With all that the right hon. Gentleman has just said, how does he explain the fact that Glasgow City Council officers were told that their bids were good and were scoring well, that they should expect to get some of them and that it was just a question of how many, but then, at the last minute, Ministers intervened—if this is not party political, I don’t know what it is—and said they were changing the goalposts? Anybody who got funding in round 1—we had had funding for one project—was no longer eligible, which wasted £500,000 of officer time. If that is not political intervention, how does the right hon. Gentleman explain it?

[Alun Cairns]

I will wait for the Minister to respond on that, but if the hon. Lady’s local authority had sufficient grounds to suggest party political interference, a judicial review would clearly find in its favour, and the Minister would have to explain the issue. The alternative is that the hon. Lady is seeking to make party political points but is not prepared to follow them through. I am just as disappointed as she is, but I am determined to learn the lessons in order to ensure that my project—amended and strengthened—succeeds in the next round, in the same way that those that failed in round 1 succeeded in round 2.

In reality, projects in Labour-run Cardiff—in Cardiff South and Penarth and in Cardiff Bay—received £50 million from the scheme, in addition to the £2.5 billion that has been spent in recent years. I want to understand why those projects qualified and not the project in Barry—a community that has been left behind for many years by the Welsh Labour Government—when the policy’s whole purpose and motive is to ensure that communities that have been left behind by various Governments can be successful. Similarly, in the neighbouring authority of Bridgend, a project to rebuild the Grand Pavilion will play a part in attracting further visitors to the area. However, that project does not have the same economic strength as the marina in Barry, which would have attracted at least £50 million of private development.

Will the Minister make officials available to go through the bids line by line, detail by detail, so that we can learn from why we have not been successful—I say that in the most positive way—and why other communities have been? On the face of it, they did not appear to have such strong applications, given what they will have received under wasted European-aided projects in recent years.

Since 1999, Wales has received close to £5 billion in European aid investment. Despite that, under the leadership and stewardship of the Welsh Government, to whom economic development is entirely devolved, Wales’s relative gross value added has fallen back significantly, and Wales has become the poorest part of the United Kingdom. That is why I am determined that the levelling-up fund, or the precursor to what will become the shared prosperity fund, will ensure that we have a much more business-focused, wealth-creating, economically regenerating package of projects, rather than some of the European-aided projects administered and led by the Welsh Government, which are now laughed at.

I remain disappointed, but I am absolutely determined that the Barry Making Waves project will succeed in round 3 with the Minister’s help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I will depart from my prepared text, because the allegations made by my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), and for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), are so serious that they require an immediate answer from the Minister, when she responds. Local authority officials spend a great deal of time preparing bids, only to be advised at the last minute that because money had been given in a previous round, they were knocked out of the competition. I want the Minister to confirm that was the case. If it was, it is scandalous, and there are grounds for looking at the process legally, as was said. It is astonishing that local authorities have been put in this position. If local authorities were told at the start that a bid was ineligible if the authority received funding in round 1, they would not bother applying for round 2. Or was this a last-minute decision?

[Alun Cairns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Stephens]

I am conscious of time; I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] He has had more than one bite at the cherry.

This is so serious. Local authorities would not have applied in round 2 if they had been told that because they got something in round 1, they would not be successful. The Minister needs to tell us when local authorities were advised of that.

There are also questions about scoring. We would think that there would be scores, and that any local authority, whether successful or not, could say to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, “Can we see our scores, please? Can you tell us where we went wrong, and why we were unsuccessful, so that if we apply in the next round, we can put that right?”. When will local authorities be told their scores? Or is it the case, as my hon. Friends allege, that local authorities were told in the week leading up to the announcement that they would be successful, and then were suddenly told that they would not be? There is something not quite right about the process; something smells here.

Can the Minister tell us how many local authorities were advised that they would get something, and then did not? I have heard that Glasgow officials were told that their bids were excellent—in fact, that they were even told, “Tell us which ones you are prioritising out of the seven.” I hope that the answer was Linthouse, but I do not know whether Glasgow officials suggested it. They were then advised that they were not getting money. That is absolutely scandalous, and it is no wonder that Members from across the House are suspicious about the whole process and the lack of transparency that seems to envelop it, given what appears to be a last-minute change by Ministers.

Knowing who made the decision is critical to this debate. Who said that if a local authority was successful in round 1, it would not get money in round 2? As a principle, that is absolutely wrong. The hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) made the reasonable point that there are areas in the country that are deprived, and I do not see any reason for deciding that because money was allocated to a local authority in round 1, it should be ineligible for round 2. He made a number of points about deprived areas needing a succession of funds, and he argued that position rather well on behalf of his constituency and his local authority. There is no reason at all why a local authority should not qualify in both rounds, so something is not quite right here.

I hope the Minister will answer those questions, because people listen to statements from the current Prime Minister—we have had a number of them over the past year. His comments about taking money away from deprived areas are amplified by the allegations that have been made this afternoon. People now think that the scheme is some sort of pork barrel exercise aimed at returning as many Conservative MPs as possible in the next election. I will leave it there; I hope that the Minister will respond to my points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dehenna Davison]

I do not have time, I am afraid. Each local authority was then capped at one successful bid in round 2—the highest scoring—noting that that would help to focus resources for delivery in a challenging economic environment. At that point, the highest-scoring projects remaining in Scotland and Wales were funded to ensure a fair spread of projects in Scotland and Wales until the minimum public commitments of 9% and 5% respectively over the first and second rounds were met. The highest-scoring projects remaining in Great Britain were funded until funding any more projects would have exhausted the funding available for Great Britain.

At that stage, there were two international territorial-level regions of Great Britain that had not received any funding in the second round, despite having bids on the shortlist. Again, prioritising the additional considerations of ensuring a fair spread of approved projects and so on, those two were brought into play, with Ministers agreeing to deselect a handful of the lowest-scoring bids across the north-west, London and Wales. Those were the regions and nations that significantly exceeded their guided allocation, taking into account historical regional investment from 2017-2022. As a result, and following a further quality assurance by officials at that stage, 101 bids were successful in Great Britain and 10 were successful in Northern Ireland. To reiterate, Ministers approved the selection of bids without adding or removing any individual bids from the funded list. The process was led by officials, aided by Ministers, to try to achieve the aims that were set out in the original prospectus to ensure a good geographic spread.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dehenna Davison]

I do not have time, I am afraid.

That brings me on to a point that we absolutely cannot lose sight of in these discussions: there will be a third round of the levelling-up fund. We will be announcing details of that incredibly soon.

[Alun Cairns]

When?

[Dehenna Davison]

I am afraid I cannot commit to a date yet, but we are working at pace to ensure that we draw up a fund that works and is quickly deliverable to ensure that we can get spades in the ground and get some of these projects delivered.

I do not have very long, but I will try to cover off some of the other points that have been made if I can. Feedback was raised by a number of hon. and right hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin). Feedback will be coming soon; we are aiming to get it out in writing initially. We want to ensure that the feedback is detailed enough to be of use, so we do not want to rush it. I have missed a lot of points, so I apologise. I will follow up a lot of those in writing, but I am very pushed for time at the moment.

Levelling Up Barry, Vale of Glamorgan

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

I will call Alun Cairns to move the motion. I will then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered levelling up Barry, Vale of Glamorgan.

Thank you, Mr Pritchard, for calling me to propose this debate on levelling up in Barry. It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, and I am grateful for the opportunity to highlight the fantastic opportunities for Barry and the background to why it needs UK Government support.

I recognise that economic development is devolved and that the primary responsibility for supporting investment in Wales falls to the Welsh Government, but the levelling-up agenda is central to the UK Government’s plans. I am delighted that my long-standing calls to change the law to allow the UK Government to invest directly in communities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland has now passed. We no longer have to wait for the Welsh Government to act.

Barry has been ignored for far too long by the Welsh Government. This is our chance. Our Barry Making Waves project provides the next step in the development of Wales’s largest town. It is a hugely exciting project, supported far and wide, and meets the aspirations that community groups and I have held for many years. Barry is a fantastic place to live, work and visit. Most recently, it has become best known to many from the BBC comedy “Gavin and Stacey”, but the town has a long, proud history steeped in coal exports, built on the back of the Barry Dock and Railways Act 1884. The Act was passed to develop a railway line from the valleys, to create a coal-exporting facility in town, and to break the monopoly of neighbouring Tiger bay.

The railway line also provided the connection for millions of tourists to visit the fantastic coastline every year, notably Whitmore bay, and, since the post-war period, the Butlin’s holiday camp, which has long since closed. That highlights the economic activity and relative prosperity that existed throughout much of the previous century. However, with the closure of the south Wales coalmines, changes to larger ships and ports, and overseas holidays becoming commonplace, Barry was left looking for a new focus.

I also want to point out that, although coalmining communities have rightly received significant sums of public money over decades to support their transition to new industries, Barry was left without, because it exported rather than mined coal. Furthermore, as west Wales and the valleys received more than £5 billion in new aid since 2000, the quirks of the map and EU regulations meant that Barry, with some of the most deprived communities in Wales, did not qualify as a priority area. As a result, very small sums were available for community programmes, rather than for significant infrastructure development.

The point I am making to the Minister is that other areas in need have been supported in their economic transition, but Barry has missed out. In spite of that, Barry has made huge strides in its regeneration over the past 15 years or so, with Barry Island, supported by the “Gavin and Stacey” phenomenon, which provided confidence and a renewed interest. The waterfront development has modernised the town and brought new housing. Campaigning groups, such as Pride in Barry, notably led by Paul Haley, and FocusBarry, led by Dennis Harkus, galvanised the community’s ambition, and local developers such as Simon Baston, took significant risks with their own investments in developing Goodsheds and former pumping station projects.

It is a town, however, that needs support to move to the next step of development. The data speaks for itself. The Welsh indices of multiple deprivation show that the most deprived communities in Wales over decades have persistently been in Barry. Five areas were among the 10% most deprived wards in Wales in 2011. That is in spite of being just a short distance from the relative affluence of Cardiff and the relative prosperity of the rural Vale. Three areas in Barry remain at the bottom of the league table. Levels of productivity are much lower than the UK average, at £14,706. The town has relatively few employment sites, and most employees commute to Cardiff to work every day.

We need to recognise, however, the positive changes that have taken place. Barry Island has been transformed to a year-round resort enjoyed by locals and visitors alike. The docks area, now referred to as the Waterfront, has been refreshed and regenerated, and a new Cardiff and Vale College campus is to be developed to support new skills.

With the help of the levelling-up bid, the town’s redevelopment will move to the next level. The Barry Making Waves project will put rocket boosters under the regeneration ambitions. It is a bid for £19.9 million of levelling-up funds to release a £32 million project. The central feature of the levelling-up bid is a 400-berth marina, which will make the most of the docks area; attract more visitors and increase spend to the community; create jobs, from engineering to hospitality; transform the image of the town; and complete the western side of the Waterfront development. It will have a new flexible 30,000 square feet hot-desking workspace to enable many of the professionals who have moved into the town to the new housing to work locally, rather than travel to Cardiff.

The proposal builds on a small-scale model elsewhere in the town, where demand is strong and the business and environmental outcomes meet local, Welsh and UK aspirations. The plan includes a 2-acre park with an events space, ensuring it remains an open, public area for everyone to enjoy, from Barry and beyond, rather than just the immediate local residents.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on bringing forward this proposal and on his assiduous efforts as an MP on behalf of his constituency. He mentioned Barry and beyond. Beyond Barry, there is my constituency of Strangford. When it comes to levelling up—I welcome the Minister to her place and I look forward to her contribution—the Government have committed to levelling up the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and I want to ensure that we in Strangford and Northern Ireland also have the same opportunities to level up. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree? Barry is great, and he should be doing that, but it is important for us, too.

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making those points, which allows me to underline some points that I touched on earlier. Economic development has generally been a devolved function. Therefore, investing in communities and attracting new jobs and companies has been a devolved, rather than a reserved, responsibility. I am a former Secretary of State and the representative of Barry, but I have also seen communities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that the devolved Administrations did not have the capacity to focus on because there were more deprived areas elsewhere. Therefore, the UK Government needed to step in.

There is also politics at play. I am concerned that the Vale of Glamorgan does not receive the Welsh Government’s support because they choose to prioritise the valley heartlands, where their party is strongly represented. This is an opportunity for the UK Government to reset that balance and invest in needy projects across the whole of the United Kingdom, whether in Northern Ireland or Wales, so that communities that have been left behind have the chance to shine in the sun.

As well as the central feature of the marina, the 30,000 square feet hot-desk workspace and open parkland, the eastern side of the dock will also have a watersports facility that will allow local residents of all backgrounds to access the water. That is hugely popular with community groups. I declare an interest: I am a trustee of the Ocean Watersports Trust Vale of Glamorgan, which will occupy that building. Importantly, that project will be in partnership with Cardiff and Vale College to further support tourism and skills development. That also complements the new college building that is being constructed just a short walk away.

The whole scheme, the whole Barry Making Waves project, is low risk—low risk to the Treasury, to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and to the local authority—because it has only two central partners: the local authority and Associated British Ports. It also has a high cost-benefit ratio that will meet the deep-rooted structural challenges in Barry, provide opportunities to many who have been left behind, and correct a deficiency in public funding support that has existed for decades. It is understandable that the Welsh Government have prioritised west Wales and the valleys, but it is regrettable that Barry has been left to reinvent itself without support compared with other areas, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned.

The levelling-up fund and shared prosperity fund were designed to meet these types of challenges in communities such as these, across the whole of the United Kingdom. I played a part in planning the policy and sought to ensure that communities across the whole of the UK that have been overlooked because of quirks of maps, EU regulations or devolution, or simply because political will has driven investment elsewhere—communities that did not fall into those favoured categories—could benefit. Such is the interest in the Barry Making Waves scheme that the Westminster-based think-tank Onward has conducted a study on Barry’s challenges and ambitions. Although the report is not yet published, I am confident that it will underline many of the points I have made, and I hope the Minister will look at that report when Onward publishes it, so strong is the interest in that regeneration project.

Finally, I want to recognise that Barry Making Waves is a springboard project that will attract other development opportunities to Barry. I am in discussions with private developers that are prepared to spend tens of millions of pounds on developing other employment sites on the back of that transformation. As well as the merits of the project in its own right, it stands as a catalyst for other private development opportunities, which include ambitions for a hotel—again, building on the strengths of the Barry Making Waves project and the renewed tourism offer.

In closing, I draw the Minister’s attention to the capacity issues. The Vale of Glamorgan is a small local authority, particularly by UK standards, and as I have stated, it does not have experience in submitting bids for large-scale capital projects because we simply did not qualify. The project has therefore taken a huge amount of effort and focus, and I pay tribute to Marcus Goldsworthy and Philip Chappell and their team from the local authority for their work in bringing those strands together and working closely with me and others to ensure that such a strong, credible bid has been made. I urge the Minister to look closely at the quality of that bid, but also to look at it in the context of a community that has not received the support it deserves from the Welsh Government or the European Union. This is Barry’s time to shine.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Dehenna Davison)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I sincerely thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) for raising the important issue of levelling up Barry town in his constituency. If I may say so, his speech was a brilliant tourism ad. He highlighted some of the best of Barry, not least “Gavin and Stacey”, which I am a huge fan of.

As my right hon. Friend highlighted, the Government’s central mission is all about levelling up all parts of the UK. For the benefit of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I reiterate that—all parts of the UK, including Wales and Northern Ireland. We will do so by ensuring that we spread opportunities more equally around the country, empowering local leaders and bringing left-behind communities up to the level of more prosperous areas. I was particularly interested to hear about the background of my right hon. Friend’s constituency, with its transition from coalmining to a new purpose. In many ways, that is reminiscent of my own constituency, which was reliant on coalmining and, of course, the railways, and has had a journey to find its new ethos and purpose. It was interesting to hear about those similarities, which I know are reflected in a number of constituencies right across the country.

I am delighted to have the chance today to set out the opportunities being made available to Barry and its community through the Government’s levelling-up agenda. Wales is already benefiting from substantial investment across a whole range of new UK Government funding opportunities. In total, Wales has been allocated over £750 million of levelling-up funding in the last year alone. That includes over £45 million from the community renewal fund, benefiting 160 local community projects. Places across Wales have also received an additional £121 million across 10 projects under the first round of the levelling-up fund. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that those new opportunities mark an incredibly exciting time for local places in Wales to be at the centre of decision making.

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for underlining the support that has been made available, but may I draw to her attention the point that I made about the capacity of local authorities? Those projects that gained support were primarily by authorities that were used to bidding for European-aided schemes. Clearly, we have now left the European Union and we have the levelling-up fund, with the shared prosperity fund to follow. Some local authorities that have been left out until now did not have the capacity to bid, or were not up to speed. That is not their fault; it is simply a lack of experience in bidding. I therefore ask the Minister to look specifically at those communities that have been left out for quite a long period.

[Dehenna Davison]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point. Ensuring that areas have the capacity and experience to complete what can be quite lengthy and complicated bidding processes is something that has featured in my inbox quite a lot during my time as Minister. I am looking at funding simplification to see how we can make these processes simpler and more streamlined so that there are fair opportunities, even for smaller authorities.

We have had a fantastic response to these new funding opportunities from local partners in Wales, including Vale of Glamorgan, which fully embraced its role in the delivery of the community renewal fund. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will know all too well about the £970,000 allocated to six exciting projects in the Vale, which have been delivering for local people, communities and businesses over the last year.

The community renewal fund is all about supporting the people and communities who need it most right across the UK. It is about creating opportunities, being innovative and trialling new approaches and ideas, all at a local level. To nurture that innovative thinking and give the communities the flexibility they need, we encourage partners to deliver on skills, local business, supporting people into employment, and community and place.

Through funds such as the community renewal fund, we have strengthened the relationship between the UK Government and the places we serve in every part of the UK, including Barry, we are working directly with local partners—people who know, understand and are part of the social fabric of their communities. I am proud that we are giving them autonomy over local decisions to support positive changes for their communities. That is evident, as I am sure my right hon. Friend will know, through Barry Bands Together, a community regeneration project run by a local musical partnership in Barry. It is using the skills of its members to work alongside the local authority music service to provide a new focal point for musical training. That multi-agency approach focuses on upskilling trainees, empowering children and embodying a cohesive and community-centric way of delivering local services through music.

The good news does not stop there. Other areas in the Vale of Glamorgan have also benefited from the community renewal fund. Enterprise Vale, another prominent project in the area, was awarded over £100,000 for its business support services. Over the last year it has been taking action to support local people into self-employment, and helping those in the community who are economically inactive to build confidence and take the important step into the world of business.

Building on the success of the community renewal fund, £2.6 billion is being allocated to places across the UK as part of the UK shared prosperity fund, which my right hon. Friend mentioned. Of that, a sizeable £585 million has been allocated to places in Wales, with over £14 million specifically for the Vale of Glamorgan. This trailblazing new approach to investment, and the empowerment of local communities to level up and build pride in place, will see direct investment in three local priorities: communities and place, support for local businesses, and people and skills.

I am pleased to say that the approach to regional collaboration intrinsic to delivering the shared prosperity fund has seen all 10 local authorities in the south-east of Wales submit a joint regional investment plan, backed with over £278 million of funding. As a partner in the region, Vale of Glamorgan will play its full part in delivering the regional investment plan and tailoring areas of support to local communities, including those in Barry.

I should also take this opportunity—I will be told off by the boss if I do not—to mention that the freeports programme is another core part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda taking place in Wales. Freeports will unlock much-needed investment in port communities up and down the country, helping those areas to overcome barriers to investment through a broad package of incentives. Our new freeport programme in Wales, which is being jointly delivered with the Welsh Government and backed by an initial £26 million of funding, will help us to make this vision a reality. The programme will drive forward our ambition for Wales to compete at a global level, while creating new local jobs and putting Welsh communities on the path to long-term growth and prosperity.

I know that my right hon. Friend will be familiar with the levelling-up fund, through which £4.8 billion of investment is being made available to provide crucial capital investment in local infrastructure. The aim of this competitive funding is to empower local areas to identify new opportunities for investment in creating pride in place. Projects are prepared in collaboration with local stakeholders and should have clear benefits to the local community, while being aligned with a broader local economic strategy. Through the first round of the levelling-up fund, over £1.7 billion was awarded to local areas across the UK, of which £121 million came to Wales, substantially more than would have been the case through any Barnett-based formula.

As Members may know, the second round of the levelling-up fund opened for bidding earlier this summer. My officials are continuing the assessment process, and successful bids should expect to be notified by the end of the year. I am sure my right hon. Friend knows that, due to the competitive process involved, I am unable to comment specifically on individual applications, but I look forward to seeing the outcome of all bids submitted, including the Barry Making Waves project, which he spoke so passionately about. I pass on my thanks to all those in his local authority who have worked so hard on making that bid and bringing it to the Government.

I thank my right hon. Friend for bringing forward this important debate—I also thank the hon. Member for Strangford for his contribution—and for drawing my attention to the Onward report, which I am interested in reading once it has been published. I certainly welcome the opportunity—assuming I stay in post—to have further conversations with my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Strangford on the future of Barry and Wales as a whole and, of course, of Strangford and Northern Ireland as a whole too.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The local councillor the hon. Lady mentions sounds like an absolutely brilliant champion for her local community. I would love to know more, particularly about what we can do to help in practical terms, and I look forward to working with her.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Energy performance improvements to domestic dwellings are an important part of the Government’s agenda in respect of climate change obligations, as well as in respect of the cost of living. May I draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to private-rented off-grid properties, for which it is much more difficult and expensive to achieve energy performance improvements than for normal domestic dwellings?

[Eddie Hughes]

It will indeed be much more challenging, which is why I am working closely with the Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Lord Callanan, to see how we can address the problem. I look forward to discussing the issue further with my right hon. Friend to see how we can find an appropriate solution.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Until recently, European aid was the main means of regenerating communities in some of the devolved nations, but that European aid was restricted to certain parts of the nations. Now, the levelling-up fund and the shared prosperity fund will give us the opportunity to regenerate other parts of the UK, particularly those areas that did not qualify for European aid. When the next window opens for the levelling-up fund, will the Minister pay particular attention to communities such as Barry, which now qualify for the levelling-up fund but did not previously qualify for European aid?

[Neil O’Brien]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right; the next round of levelling-up funding will be opening shortly. He is also right to draw attention to the fact that outside the European Union we have a lot more flexibility about how we spend, and we can use that to pick up some of those exciting opportunities in other places.

Levelling Up

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That is a very fair point and I will look into it.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on taking back control and on his strategic approach to levelling up across the whole of the United Kingdom. This contrasts so favourably with the billions of pounds of European aid that the Labour party wasted in Wales over the past 20 years. May I ask him to pay particular attention to those areas in Wales that did not qualify for European aid, so that we can be levelled up at last?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to make sure that the additional funding available through the UK shared prosperity fund goes to all the communities in Wales that deserve it.

Building Safety

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes two very important points. We have already changed regulation with regard to flooding, but more could be done. I will ensure that either I or the relevant Minister sees her before the end of February, if that is okay.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, which will yield significant benefits directly for leaseholders in England. As he has acknowledged, this policy area is devolved and therefore responsibility in Wales falls to the Welsh Government. However, the UK Government, through their initiatives, may well raise significant sums of money for this purpose. What conclusion has he drawn on whether that funding should be ring-fenced for that specific purpose in Wales, rather than diverted to other purposes?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. We of course respect the devolution settlement, but he is absolutely right that money generated for building safety should be devoted, as far as possible, to building safety. I will work with him and others to ensure that the focus is maintained in the way he outlines.

Community Renewal Fund and Levelling Up Fund in Wales

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con) [V]]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Rees, like many other Members present. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) on securing this important and timely debate before 18 June, the deadline for the first round.



I say warmly and enthusiastically that the levelling-up fund is welcome. It is something that I have sought to work with and work on for many years, from the time of the referendum on leaving the European Union, and I am excited and I congratulate not only MHCLG but also the current Secretary of State for Wales and the Wales Office for securing this and seeing it through right to the very end. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) highlighted, there are many MPs from across the House who would come to see the Secretary of State at various stages, seeking support for a range of projects but maybe not fully understanding that the lack of capacity to spend and the lack of a budget—both resulting from the legal constraints at the time—meant that the Wales Office could not help. Now it can help, working with colleagues at MHCLG.

We should also remember that levelling up was the key theme, along with getting Brexit done, during campaigning for the last general election. I therefore reject the complaints from some Opposition Members. It is clear that the Government secured a majority on their levelling-up agenda —this is a key part of it—together with getting Brexit done, given that the then-European aid programmes obviously have come to an end and this naturally and logically follows from that.

It is telling that the communities that often received the largest amounts of European aid were some of the communities that voted in the strongest numbers to leave the European Union. That tells us something—that the programme, as it was, was not working. We know that more than £4 billion has been spent over almost 20 years of European-aided programmes in Wales, but clearly, sadly and unfortunately, Wales remains the poorest part of the United Kingdom. Therefore, a fresh approach is welcome.

I am disappointed that many colleagues on the Opposition Benches seem to welcome funds when they come from Europe but do not necessarily welcome them as much when they come from Whitehall. This is an opportunity to bind the Union together, and to recognise that UK taxpayers support UK residents wherever in the United Kingdom they live. My constituency received very little, if anything, in European aid because it did not fall into west Wales and the valleys. Some smaller sums were available, but certainly not transformational funds that would make a world of difference, like the opportunity offered by the levelling-up fund. I welcome it, I believe my constituents strongly welcome it and I congratulate the Vale of Glamorgan local authority on its engagement with the process in seeking to meet the 18 June deadline.

Barry, the largest town in my constituency, has some of the most deprived communities in Wales but, because of the structures that the Welsh Government and the European Union previously introduced, Barry and those communities were not able to benefit from additional aid outside the Welsh block grant. Now, under the levelling-up fund, they can. Barry has turned a corner in the last decade and exciting developments are taking place. However, the levelling-up fund offers us the opportunity to take it to the next level.

The proposal that we are looking to bring forward is a marina, which will complement so many other exciting projects that are taking shape. That exciting project had to be brought together within quite a short time. I hope the Minister will recognise that authorities in Wales tend to be smaller, and therefore their capacity to develop bids within a relatively short period is not as great as that of some authorities elsewhere in the UK. Similarly, some authorities, particularly those in south-east or eastern parts of Wales, are not used to bidding for such large infrastructure projects or schemes. They lack experience and therefore will need extra support.

Finally, it would help if the Minister would underline when the next round will open and whether, if a bid is unsuccessful on this occasion, positive feedback may be given to make it appropriate for the next round of funding.