Drew Hendry
Main Page: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)Department Debates - View all Drew Hendry's debates with the Cabinet Office
(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House notes with concern that the Government is more than half a year behind its schedule to provide details of post-2020 funding through a UK Shared Prosperity Fund; supports the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recommendation that the Fund should at the very least match the £2.4 billion per year currently allocated through the EU structural funds; and calls on the Government to ensure that full details of the fund are published with urgency, that the devolved settlement is respected and that there is no reduction in the levels of funding to devolved governments or their role in distributing funds.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us the opportunity to bring this matter to the Chamber today. Scottish communities stand to lose millions of pounds from Brexit. Communities, charities and other organisations have been waiting for years to find out what funding will be available. There is also a threat to devolution. Long-term planning has been abandoned to Brexit.
We need clarity about the details of the so-called shared prosperity fund. We need to know whether the devolution settlement will be protected. Currently, until 2020, communities and charities can access funding worth £2.4 billion a year. Work by the Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions—the CPMR—shows that, for 2021-27, the UK would have received €13 billion in regional development funding. For Scotland, failure to replace that would mean a loss of €840 million. For the highlands and islands alone, that would be €130 million. It is therefore vital that that money is replaced.
That funding has underpinned further education, youth employment, smart cities, connectivity for islands and communities, small and medium-sized enterprises, apprenticeships, regeneration, innovation, productivity, social inclusion and much more. In Scotland, it has supported projects and development in West Lothian, the Orkney isles, Ayrshire, Fife, Argyll and Bute, Midlothian, East Lothian, Perth and Kinross, Aberdeenshire, West Dunbartonshire, Stirling, Western Isles, Inverclyde, Clackmannanshire, Moray, Shetland, Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Dundee and more.
In the highlands and islands, we would be hard pushed to find any town or village, let alone our city of Inverness, that has not had investment since we joined the European Community in the 1970s. Indeed, two specific and unavoidable icons stand testament to that. The Kessock bridge was built through Europe before devolution because Westminster ignored the highlands for decades.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
When the hon. Gentleman and I drive around the highlands, we cannot help but notice the signs with the stars on them on new bits of road that say that the development was funded by the EU. Without that funding, those roads would probably not have been built and transport across our vast constituencies would have been difficult for our constituents. Replacing the funding is essential. Notwithstanding the fact that the Minister has met me several times, tried to do his level best and knows the area, I am bound to say that we seem no further forward, which my constituents find not just frustrating but deeply worrying.
Drew Hendry
It is absolutely true that the money has had a massive impact on the infrastructure of the highlands and it must be replaced.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
This is an important debate and I know that the Minister has worked hard on the matter and been very good with Members. The hon. Gentleman talks about peripheral areas, and west Wales and the valleys have particularly benefited. However, small businesses tell me that they need to plan. They need some indication of what is happening. We have just talked about science and technology. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that research and development also require planning? Brexit has taken the Government’s eye off the ball, but we need some answers now.
Drew Hendry
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those comments and I can confirm that I will underline those very points later in my speech.
Jake Berry
Show me the money.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) has repeatedly referred to “EU money”. I hope he will acknowledge that it is not the EU’s money but British taxpayers’ money and that he will reflect on the fact that, in 2018, we paid £13.2 billion into the EU and they returned £4.2 billion to this country.
Drew Hendry
I will reflect on the fact that if it had not been for EU funding—that is what I am talking about: funding that is generated out of EU schemes—the highlands and islands, as others have pointed out, would have been ignored by Westminster.
Several hon. Members rose—
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the difference between the European Union and the Government here in Westminster is that the European Union has a regional policy to counteract the effects of poverty, unlike this Government?
Drew Hendry
Yes—I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that comment.
Before I took those interventions, I was talking about the two icons, one of them being the Kessock bridge, which I will not go into now. It is there for everybody to see and is a monument to the fact that Europe has paid attention to the regions that need assistance. The other icon is the University of the Highlands and Islands. EU funding enables research capacity, new facilities and equipment and expert researchers, and it has enabled doctoral and post-doctoral students to support priority sectors such as life sciences, marine science, aquaculture, archaeology, Gaelic and the creative economy—all coming together to make the highlands the vibrant place it is. The University of the Highlands and Islands receives the largest Scottish grant of €7.17 million, out of €68.6 million throughout Scotland. The view of the University of the Highlands and Islands is that Brexit will reduce prospects in those areas.
Erasmus has enabled student and staff exchanges for more than 30 years. International collaboration and EU engagement are at the heart of the University of the Highlands and Islands, and have been since its inception. It was helped by the EU to achieve university status and title in 2011, and is a vital contributor to economic growth. More than £250 million of investment has been levered into the UHI through structural funding. Some 25% of the university’s non-teaching “other” income has come from the EU. If we were remaining in the EU, there would be much more potential for growth through the EU 2020-27 programmes.
Adam Haxell of MillionPlus, the Association for Modern Universities, said to me:
“On UHI itself, it is important to emphasis what a remarkable success story it has been. The idea of having a university that covered this area in the early 1990s seemed totally unrealistic to many, and it is thanks to the determination and perseverance of those involved combined with the spread of funds they were able to draw down on, namely European funding streams, that made it happen. Today, the university stands as a pillar of the regional economy of the Highlands and Islands and an important element of the modern social fabric. The range of courses that are offered through this institution, some of which relate directly to the regional culture and heritage, combine to create a unique local offer that reflects the needs and ambitions of local residents. Moreover, in the last Research Excellence Framework, 69% of research at the institution was deemed world-leading or internationally excellent. For an institution that only gained university title in 2011, this is a phenomenal trajectory and could not have happened without the support it got.”
He went on to say that
“Kate Louise McCulough has written on the historic framing of the ‘Highland problem’ in Scottish and UK public policy and how European funds played a critical role in its transformation from the 1980s to become ‘…an example of what a successful peripheral region looks like’.”
Drew Hendry
I will not; I am going to make some progress, as I indicated. There is very limited time.
Communities and charities have used European funding to benefit people, especially the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. The Shaw Trust says:
“Without ESF—
European social fund—
“funding, Shaw Trust would not have been able to support 70,000 disabled people”
and
“offenders…to gain new skills, improve their wellbeing and find work”.
Equally Ours—formerly the Equality and Diversity Forum—says that EU funding has provided vital, dedicated support to individuals experiencing disadvantage, discrimination and abuse, as well as the voluntary and community organisations that support them. It says that the continuing lack of consultation on the UK shared prosperity fund is creating significant uncertainty for communities, organisations and disadvantaged people.
Communities and charities have now been waiting for years to find out what funding will be available post Brexit, yet so far there is nothing from the UK Government, other than a name, that the Union flag will be on it and that it will be administered by the Minister for local government in England. That is in spite of a recognition of how valuable the funds have been and a commitment made to replace them. The UK shared prosperity fund was promised by the Tories in their 2017 manifesto. They said that it would
“reduce inequalities…across our four nations.”
They said it would be “cheap to administer” and “low in bureaucracy”. Without a like-for-like replacement, inequalities will increase, and that is what we are now looking at. The Tories were right in the second part of what they said: the fund is cheap and there is no bureaucracy—because it does not exist.
The Library notes that many considerations are required for the fund, including priorities, objectives, amounts of money, allocation, method of model, length of planning and who administers funds. The latter role currently rests with the devolved Governments. All the organisations and charities that have contacted me agree with the conclusions of the all-party group on post-Brexit funding for nations, regions and local areas, which in turn received many submissions, including from the Welsh Government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Scottish local authorities directly, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and numerous educational and voluntary bodies. They all said, first, that the fund’s budget must be no less in real terms than the EU and UK funding streams it replaces, and, secondly, that the devolved nations’ share should not be reduced and that it should remain a devolved matter.
The UK Government must now respect the devolution settlement and UK Ministers should commit to work with all the devolved Administrations to agree funding arrangements that make sense for all the nations of the UK. As I have said, currently the biggest piece of concrete information we have is a written statement from July 2018 that largely consists of a future planning framework for England, with, as mentioned, the English Communities Minister, who is judged on English community improvement, in charge of UK funding distribution.
The groups and communities aided by the funds do not believe that Westminster knows best how to act in the interests of the parts of Scotland that need the most support. They do not want to see a Westminster power grab. There have been no assurances about devolved powers, despite numerous questions raised in the House. In mid-November last year, we were promised that a consultation on the UK shared prosperity fund would be published before the end of that year, but there is still nothing. All the while, the hard-working volunteers, charities and communities face rising concerns about the future of the people they selflessly serve and about their own futures. They need more than the new Secretary of State for Scotland saying that he will put Union flags on all projects, with the attendant suggestion of misplaced priorities and a desire to interfere with devolution by insisting on UK Government agreement on all UK shared prosperity funding. It is unacceptable.
The Scottish Government are determined to defend and maintain the benefits that EU funding has given them, to defend the organisations I mentioned and to defend their hard-won fiscal responsibility. How will the shared prosperity fund ensure the flexibility, which currently exists with EU funding, to allow organisations to fund different policy areas, from biotech to tourism and education? How will the new fund enable strategic planning within organisations over the longer term, as EU funding has enabled? Will the Minister guarantee like-for-like funding for the €13 billion that would have come from the EU? Will he guarantee no detriment to the Scottish Government as a result of Brexit? Will he commit today to respecting the devolution settlement? If he cannot do those things—if he cannot make those commitments—he should work with his Government to revoke article 50, so that the money is not lost to our communities. If he is not able to do that, all it will do is show the people of Scotland that they need to make a new choice about their future—to be an independent country, taking their own seat in Europe.
Several hon. Members rose—
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) on securing this debate. I thought we were going to be singing from the same hymn sheet today, because in previous debates on this topic we have agreed, but unfortunately he has, yet again, let nationalism get in the way of some of the facts and figures, and the actual impetus and help that these structural funds deliver. He is quite right that in the period 2014 to 2022 the funding arrangement for the EU structural fund is about £15 billion for the United Kingdom. That gets topped up to about £26 billion, I am informed by the Library, with UK match funding.
The hon. Gentleman raised a point about some of the roads being built in his constituency, as did the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). In those constituencies—yes, they are right—the EU flag does fly, but why does the Union flag not fly proudly alongside the EU flag and the Saltire when the UK has made a contribution, as I believe my right hon. Friend the Minister will be able to confirm?
Scotland received around £1.2 billion from EU structural funds between 2010 and 2016, which is great, and I will come on to say why I want that to be secured and continued. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey parades and champions the EU structural funds, as will I, but he was less willing to recognise the £1.2 billion of additional funding awarded to Scotland by the Government in the spending round just yesterday, which will give our devolved Administration in Scotland over not a six-year or 10-year period but a one-year period the greatest settlement we have had in over a decade.
My constituency of Ochil and South Perthshire has only received £1.1 million to £1.3 million a year of EU funds between 2014 and 2020 so far. That is not enormous, but it is helpful. Although Scotland has 8% of the UK population, we receive around 14% of the UK allocation, so it is very important to us. I know from visiting companies such as the Loch Leven Equine Practice in my constituency that these funds can be very helpful to small businesses.
The funds are meant to help combat structural inequality and have a transformative effect on the economy, but from my constituency point of view, they have not been able to do that. In Clackmannanshire, we still have a job density of only 0.5 per head of population. We have higher rates of unemployment and youth unemployment than the Scottish and UK averages. In Perth and Kinross, on the other side of my constituency, we also see it reflected in some of the official figures in terms of deprivation and in the recent increase in the number of drug deaths per 1,000 people.
I am quite excited about the fact that the shared prosperity fund can be a fresh start. Unlike the SNP, Conservative Members will be requesting more funding and coming up with innovative solutions. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey would like to make an intervention, I will gladly let him. He certainly did not let anyone on the Government Benches intervene on him.
Luke Graham
I will let him intervene, but before I do, the House will be well aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) tried to intervene on the him, and he refused her multiple times. It is a friendly understanding among Scottish MPs, who have to get back to friends, family and constituencies on a Thursday, that we usually let one another intervene because travel is very restrictive. He failed to do that. However, I will extend the courtesy to him in the hope that it will be reciprocated to my colleagues in future.
Drew Hendry
I thought the hon. Gentleman was inviting me to intervene on him. He mentions extra money for Scotland, but he does not take into account the cumulative cuts of £12 billion that we have had over the whole decade.
Drew Hendry
I thank all hon. Members who took part in today’s debate and the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity. I must correct the Minister, because the CPMR is not a think tank. It is a representative organisation of local authorities from across Europe, and I know that because I used to be its vice-president. We asked the Minister to clarify the flexibility and timetable, but we have had no answer. We asked the Minister whether funding will be matched pound for pound, but we have had no answer. We have had no answer on whether devolution will be fully respected. He said—[Interruption.] I will allow the Minister in.
Jake Berry
To be absolutely clear and to repeat what I said in my contribution, the Government will fully respect the devolution settlement in respect of the UK shared prosperity fund and, I am sure, in all other respects.
Drew Hendry
In that case, I will accept the Minister’s comments, but he will be judged not on cheap words but on the actions of this Government and on whether they fail our communities.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes with concern that the Government is more than half a year behind its schedule to provide details of post-2020 funding through a UK Shared Prosperity Fund; supports the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recommendation that the Fund should at the very least match the £2.4 billion per year currently allocated through the EU structural funds; and calls on the Government to ensure that full details of the fund are published with urgency, that the devolved settlement is respected and that there is no reduction in the levels of funding to devolved governments or their role in distributing funds.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier today, following the statement by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, I asked about aspects of being Irish, British or both in relation to an upcoming review that the previous Prime Minister had promised. In response, the Secretary of State stated:
“It is vital that this House continues to respect the dual citizenship components that the hon. Gentleman talks about”.
I talked about the birth right to be Irish, the birth right to be British, or both. What is open to Members such as myself to ensure that the Secretary of State reads the Good Friday agreement and recognises that the utterances that they make in relation to the politics of Northern Ireland have grave consequences not only for the peace, but for the social and economic prosperity of the people of Northern Ireland?