Capital Projects: Spending Decisions

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We come to the SNP spokesperson.

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

Members need only have attended Tuesday afternoon’s Westminster Hall debate on this subject to realise that the levelling-up agenda is unravelling. There was an astonishing admission of last-minute ministerial interference from the Treasury, particularly in Glasgow, where it is reported that £500,000-worth of employee work hours were put into bids that were unsuccessful due to that last-minute interference.

The Treasury’s decision to rein in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is far from being standard practice. So far, we have not received an honest reason why that happened. Have the Government given up all pretence of caring about levelling up, or do they no longer have faith in DLUHC to deliver it? Three of the five most deprived areas in Scotland have not received a penny of levelling-up funding. Is the levelling-up project now funnelling money from the poorest areas to the wealthiest? Given the astonishing admission on Tuesday afternoon in Westminster Hall that Ministers interfered at the last minute to take out any round 2 applications from areas that received money, no matter how little, in round 1, will the Minister apologise to the House, and to the local authorities that put so much time and effort into preparing the bids?

[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely incorrect to say that the levelling-up agenda is unravelling. Just last month we announced several billion pounds of additional capital spending on levelling-up projects bid for in round 2. As for caring about levelling up, communities up and down the land are getting the opportunity to transform their area, and to make good on promises that were not delivered under successive Governments for many decades. We in this place should celebrate that, rather than focusing on what is being focused on now. I gently say to him that if in Scotland, as in Derbyshire and elsewhere in the country, a number of areas have not been successful in getting funds that were on offer, are being provided and will be spent, I very much encourage those areas to apply when round 3 of the levelling-up fund opens in the coming months.