Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Kate Hollern Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab) [V]]

After 10 years of Government cuts, Blackburn is one of the most deprived towns in the country. We have been under additional restrictions for longer than almost anywhere else. Our high street has been decimated, and going into the pandemic, Blackburn’s health outcomes were some of the worst in the country. So it is right that Blackburn has been identified as a high priority for the Government’s levelling up fund, and I look forward to working with the council on the further development of the exciting plans for the borough to recover and grow.

Having read the fine print of the Government’s self-styled levelling-up agenda, though, I must say I am disappointed. I am concerned that the money is not going to all the right places. Some is going to the Chancellor’s constituency, where multimillion-pound houses are on sale, yet deprived areas like Halton and Salford—both identified as being in the top 20 local authorities—are not so fortunate. There is clearly something wrong with that, so I ask the Minister what level of involvement Ministers have in choosing winners and losers, and whether the Department will share with the House the formula that the Government use to allocate funding.

My next issue is with the Government forcing regions to compete with one another. If the Government really want the regions to recover, all regions should get their fair share of investment. It must mean that the Government accept that places like Blackburn are starting from a lower base and will recover more slowly, and therefore the Government must put more into the most deprived regions to unleash their potential. The Government also need to recognise that the funding announced in the Budget does not come anywhere near the £15 billion that has been cut from council budgets over the past decade.

The hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) boasted about what successive Tory Governments had done for Lancashire. He failed to mention that Lancashire councils have faced, on average, 45% cuts in the last decade. That is not levelling up Lancashire—it is levelling down, particularly in public services.

Briefly, for the sake of time, my final issue is with the Government’s double counting and the smoke and mirrors strategy they deploy. Half of the £6 million being handed out to councils this coming financial year as part of the levelling-up fund has been reshuffled from towns fund funding. The £150 million budget of the pinch point fund announced in 2018 has now been assumed into the levelling-up fund, and £175 million for freeports has also been redistributed. So when the Government talk about a £4.8 billion levelling-up fund and a £3.6 billion towns fund, they need to be honest about the fact that they are playing musical chairs with old money in many cases.