Capital Projects: Spending Decisions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Andrew Western
Main Page: Andrew Western (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)Department Debates - View all Andrew Western's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Capital Projects: Spending Decisions
Andrew Western Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Lee Rowley
The information about the distribution of levelling-up funds has been published. I have seen, across Yorkshire and north Derbyshire in the coalfields that the hon. Gentleman and I both represent, a significant transformative opportunity through the towns fund and the levelling-up fund, which will make a huge difference to those places that traditionally have been left behind and which this Government, and this Government only, have responded to in our policy agenda.
Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Colleagues will note that the Minister attempts to obfuscate through refusals to address the fundamental question of whether the approval process has changed. What supposedly drew the ire and frustration of the Secretary of State’s colleagues was a speech in Manchester on 25 January suggesting that further funding would be available for some northern councils. What caused more angst in the Treasury: the fact that money was being spent in a rogue manner, or the fact that it went against the Prime Minister’s long-standing ambition to divert money away from deprived areas back towards places such as Royal Tunbridge Wells?
Lee Rowley
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for Stretford and Urmston for his point. He will know, because he has long experience in local government, that that would be a crude and inaccurate misrepresentation of what the Prime Minister said a number of months ago. The hon. Gentleman’s first point was about obfuscation. There was no obfuscation. I was absolutely clear at the beginning of my response about what has changed and why that is the case.