Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts
Tuesday 9th March 2021

(3 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Liz Saville Roberts Portrait Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC) [V]
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Page 41 of the Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto in Wales guaranteed that Wales would

“receive at least the same level of financial support”—

from the UK—

“as it currently receives from the EU.”

That was a cast-iron, copper-bottomed manifesto promise. We also had endless levelling-up rhetoric and the UK Government singing the praises of the Union. What could possibly go wrong?

Fifteen months later, this Budget announced an array of competing, competitive and opaque Westminster-controlled funds, which undermine rather than enhance Wales’s economic strategy, and fail to honour this Government’s promises to Wales. The shared prosperity fund’s pilot, disingenuously named the community renewal fund, was allocated a mere £220 million to boost the entire UK, yet Wales alone received around £370 million a year in needs-based funding—I emphasis that it was needs-based funding—from Europe. This is not only a broken manifesto promise, but a broken promise to Wales.

Equally flawed is the levelling-up fund, which is being applied in the devolved nations in a way that is deliberately set out to undermine devolution. Both schemes entail UK-wide competition, rather than a needs-based system, which effectively and disinterestedly tackles the UK’s vast regional inequalities without fear or favour.

Welsh local authorities will now bid for funding from a smaller pot in direct competition with the entire UK. The consequences for economic planning are enormous. Instead of a Wales-wide economic development agenda, the UK Government have divided and, they hope, conquered Wales, by breaking our economy into 22 competing units. What makes that worse, of course, is that the UK Government have linked the success of these funds to representation by MPs. The Chancellor is therefore obviously not discomfited by whether Wales receives our fair share, since the Government are also cutting the number of Welsh MPs by a fifth.

It seems that this Conservative Government, not content with breaking promises and scorning need, are rigging the system to favour their own political interests, as both funds disproportionately benefit Conservative seats, including, appallingly, the Chancellor’s.

The Chancellor failed to present a coherent long-term strategy that complements Wales’s existing development agenda to improve the lives of Welsh people. Instead, he withdrew support, undermined our autonomy and prioritised his party’s interest. Wales does have a choice, though, and Plaid Cymru has a better plan—a strategic £6 billion recovery stimulus to make our economy fairer and greener. I urge the Chancellor to give us the tools to help ourselves and deliver a recovery that works for Wales.