Towns Fund

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government if he will make a statement on the towns fund.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)]

The towns fund is one element of this Government’s mission to spread opportunity and to level up by investing in towns and smaller cities—places to support businesses and communities so that we can help them to thrive.

Last year we announced that 101 places had been invited to develop proposals for a town deal as part of the £3.6 billion towns fund. These towns are spread across the country. Many are birthplaces of industry and centres of commerce. Others are bastions of the maritime economy or the pleasures of the English seaside. Others are great agricultural and market towns. They are all different. But what they do have in common is that they have been underinvested in and undervalued by central Government for too long as too much investment has been centred on our big cities.

Town deals are about reversing that trend. They are about providing investment and confidence at a crucial time for these communities. Through town deals, we are driving economic regeneration and growth, raising living standards and boosting productivity. We are investing in new uses for often derelict and unloved spaces. We are creating new cultural and economic assets that will benefit those communities not just today but for generations to come. We are connecting people through better infrastructure both digital and physical, such as the new walking and cycling routes planned for Torquay and the creation of the new digi-tech factory in Norwich.

We have already made some investments as a rapid response to the effects of covid-19 where towns are particularly vulnerable. Up-front grants of up to £1 million are being spent in places such Burton-on-Trent, on its new main shopping centre to allow greater access for pedestrians and cyclists, or on demolishing and rebuilding unloved buildings in places like Newcastle-under-Lyme. Many towns are repurposing empty shops into vibrant community and business spaces that will help them to bounce back when covid is done.

Each town selected to bid for a town deal is eligible for an investment of up to £25 million. Of course, that is not guaranteed, and all proposals are rigorously assessed by officials in my Department. In exceptional circumstances, such as the nationally significant plans for the great town of Blackpool, we will invest more. I am particularly excited by Blackpool’s plans to make its illuminations even more impressive and attract more visitors when they are back next year.

Town deals are about more than simply investment. They are about the whole town coming together, to create and share a genuine vision for the future of that place. We have just offered Barrow-in-Furness a town deal that will help to address the skills gap, create better housing and support local businesses to grow and employ more people. I am hugely excited by these deals. They offer a chance to turn around the fortunes of many, many places.

This is just the start. The Government are committed to levelling up all parts of the country. We want everyone, wherever they live, to benefit from increased economic growth and prosperity. Town deals are but one way to achieve that. All Members of the House will agree that places such as Blackpool, Barrow and Darlington need and deserve investment, and they will have it under this Government. The work of the towns fund is just beginning.

[Justin Madders]

Thank you for granting the urgent question, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for his response, although many questions remain unanswered. He discussed the Blackpool illuminations, and we certainly need illumination on this side of the House about exactly why particular towns were chosen and not others. Can he tell us what was in his mind when he ignored civil servants’ advice and allocated funding to low-priority towns? Was it really a complete coincidence that all the low-priority towns that he chose happened to be in Tory-held or target seats? We have heard nothing to convince us that it is anything other than a deliberate ploy.

Serious concerns have been expressed, not just by Opposition Members but by the National Audit Office and the cross-party Public Accounts Committee. We are told that we are making the issue party political, but I remind Government Members that we are not the only ones who question this process. This is party political because the Government made it so in the first place by gerrymandering the fund. Can the Secretary of State give us assurances that the whole rationale for these decisions will be published and that any future rounds of the towns fund will be dealt with solely on merit?

I want to know whether Ellesmere Port will get a fair crack of the whip next time round. Before the scheme was announced we were told that we were well placed for the next round of funding. If the funds had been allocated on the scores alone there is no doubt that we would have qualified for support, and we would have put that money to good use, because there are ambitious plans for the town, ready to go, that only need Government support to be realised. When is the next opportunity, and will funding be allocated on a transparent and impartial basis? Does the Secretary of State accept that the pandemic has accelerated the challenges that many towns face and urgent action is needed? There can be no levelling up if one structural bias is replaced by another. There can be no levelling up if the playing field is uneven, and there can be no levelling up if large parts of the country are ignored just because they voted the wrong way.

[Robert Jenrick]

I look forward to receiving a bid from Ellesmere Port in the competitive phase next year. It seems as if the hon. Gentleman wants more of the towns fund, not less, and we can all agree that this is an important investment opportunity for places throughout the country.

A rigorous and robust procedure was put in place by the Department, before I or any other Minister set foot in the Department. That was then followed; we followed the advice of our excellent civil servants in the Department —it is a pity that the Opposition tried to cast aspersions on them—by selecting the 40 most highly ranked towns and smaller cities that their methodology drew up. It is surprising that the hon. Gentleman has such great enthusiasm for algorithm-based policy making. We have learned in the past year that a degree of judgment and qualitative analysis is also useful. The officials advised just that. They said that in addition to those 40 places we should use our judgment to select other places for inclusion from the list informed by the information and advice that they provided to us, because many of those places were quite finely balanced.

That is entirely consistent, and is set out in the work that the Department has shared with the National Audit Office. I have seen the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee and, in the usual way, the Department will respond. The permanent secretary of my Department has made it clear that Ministers followed a rigorous and robust procedure in full. That is quite right, and that is how we will approach the next round of funding.

All of us on both sides of the House should be able to agree that this fund is important and that these places need investment. We are working very well with Labour councils in these places. The hon. Gentleman says that these are Conservative-voting places. I am afraid that it is not the towns fund that is responsible for the way people have voted in those communities—it is the fact that Labour MPs and successive Labour Governments have let down those communities for too long. More than 60% of the towns and smaller cities that we have invested in have Labour councils, and we are working extremely well with them, whether that is Wolverhampton or St Helens; I am sure we will hear other examples today. I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the House to continue to invest and level up.