Towns Fund

Ian Liddell-Grainger Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con) [V]]

I am absolutely delighted to be able to say a few words about the Bridgwater town fund. Good ideas are always the simplest and this idea is absolutely terrific. It is working and it is working well. The chance to bring in brand new schemes to the benefit of the whole Bridgwater area has been put together by some of the best people in our community. It is like winning the lottery and then doing something very constructive with it. It showcases the imagination of the folk who know what they are doing and love the town. I am proud to play a small part in the town board. I was asked to join: the rules of the board insist that local MPs, parish councils, town councils and all sorts of tiers of government take part in the process. I pay enormous tribute to Sedgemoor District Council and Bridgwater Town Council, which have been marvellous.

Obviously, the people who understand this place and work in the town are invaluable. They are given seats at the table from the word go—community groups, businesses small and large, and the enterprise partnership. The Government rightly wanted to use local brainwaves to start things moving. The expertise of Bridgwater Town Council and Sedgemoor District Council is vital. They know how to make things work. We just have to look at Hinkley. If I have a niggle, it is the presence of Somerset County Council on the board. I pay tribute to Fiona McMillan who has to put up with an enormous amount as the chairman.

We could try to measure Somerset’s contribution to the Bridgwater Town Council with a very powerful microscope —it is invisible. Somerset County Council has no role to play. It is insignificant, incompetent, and quickly round the corner with public money. Many people think that Somerset has been spending Government covid grants on other things, never mind this. Its book-keeping might well have been invented by Dickens’s dodgy character Fagin—as in “You’ve got to pick a pocket or two.” I do not trust it, and I am not alone.

Let me give an up-to-the minute example. We learned today, thanks to the local news, that the county council wants to spend £3 million on a solar plant in Bridgwater. That is an enormous amount of money for a council with a debt worth hundreds of millions of pounds. It is no wonder that people wonder where it got the cash. Any sensible county council would have told Bridgwater Town Council and Sedgemoor District Council all about this in advance, but not this county council. It has nothing constructive to add to the towns fund and it cannot even be bothered to consult. That really says it all. We must look at changing that part of the rules and the Minister needs to look at this carefully.

I will say that, in Bridgwater, we have provided not only Hinkley, but one of the largest distribution centres, Morrisons, Wisemans, Mulberry Handbags, and Junction 24, the huge auction centre. We are doing our job and that towns fund has added to that. It has given us the jam, the cream on the cake. I tell you this, Mr Deputy Speaker, we are going from strength to strength and King Alfred would be proud.