Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Exiting the European Union
Gareth Snell
Main Page: Gareth Snell (Labour (Co-op) - Stoke-on-Trent Central)Department Debates - View all Gareth Snell's debates with the Department for Exiting the European Union
(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
The point I was trying to make was that we as a country were a net contributor. We were the second biggest net contributor in the system that redistributed those funds. There is no doubt that the UK Shared Prosperity Fund can more than match EU funds. The details of that, as the hon. Lady well knows, will be discussed as we leave the EU on 29 March.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
May I quietly and politely encourage the Minister to speak to his colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to make sure that funding from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which will come in once we have left the European Union, is not required to be on a match funding basis? Our small towns up and down the country are unable to raise the match funding to access such funds, so the money ends up in the big cities, where the capital is available.
Kwasi Kwarteng
That is obviously an important part of the ongoing discussion. There is no doubt that, with the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, we will be able to have a better, more sensitive regional allocation than is currently the case under the EU system.