Towns Fund

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend and I have discussed this previously. The criteria designed by the Department for the towns fund placed an upper limit on the size of communities that were able to benefit from it, because it was supposed to support towns and smaller cities. I appreciate that the circumstances of Stoke are unusual because, although a city, it is a collection of historical towns, so it was not able to be considered as part of the process. When we design the criteria for the competitive phase, we will take into consideration her view that collections of towns, even within a broader city, might be eligible.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

When I consider the constituencies of the hon. Members on the Government Benches who have contributed so far—indeed, the constituencies of other hon. Members who are in their places—such as Wolverhampton North East, Ashfield, Warrington South, Workington and Bishop Auckland, and I see the hon. Members for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) and for Shipley (Philip Davies), every single one of those constituencies scored less than Ellesmere Port and Neston in the same borough as the City of Chester, and yet they were awarded the money and Ellesmere Port was not. We know that rankings are important, because the Secretary of State used the ranking of Newark in the east midlands to justify money being awarded to his own constituency. Let me ask him specifically: who took the decision to exclude Ellesmere Port town centre from the money allocation, and what criteria were used?

[Robert Jenrick]

I have been very clear that, on the advice of civil servants, we gave the opportunity to bid for a town deal to the 40 most highly ranked. Then, in accordance with the advice of civil servants, we applied a qualitative judgment in coming to conclusions on the others. As the civil servants made clear, some of those communities were very finely balanced, and it was important to take a geographical spread and a spread of different types of community, whether ex-coalfield, seaside, market towns, or sub-high streets and communities within great cities.

With respect to Ellesmere Port, I look forward to receiving a bid in the competitive phase to come. I point out that the Department chose Ellesmere Port to be one of the 14 pilots for our high streets taskforce. I hope that the significant amounts of money that we are investing and spending in Ellesmere Port are making a difference and regenerating its high street.