United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Lord Fowler and Lord Liddle

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, I have received requests to ask a short question from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Purvis of Tweed. I call the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, to ask a short question for elucidation.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the Government’s levelling-up agenda but, having listened to the noble Baroness, they seem to have a fundamentally different approach to how this should be achieved from what has been a shared consensus for the last 20 years or so. We all thought the way to achieve levelling up, economic development and all the other things mentioned in Clause 42 was through devolution, bringing economic powers closer to the people. That was the logic of Scottish and Welsh devolution and the logic of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cameron Government, George Osborne, who promoted the northern powerhouse, the Midlands engine and all the rest. The Government now seem to be saying, “We want to run the show centrally”. Is that so?

Do the Government not recognise that all this talk about the EU directing how the funds were spent is nonsense? I was very involved with the North West Development Agency; we directed how the funds were spent from that agency. Are the Government not proposing to weaken the powers that the devolved bodies have over structural funds? Finally, is it not the case, as I have been told—someone made a cursory reading of the Red Book—that next year the Government are allocating £220 million to the shared prosperity fund, which is a far lower sum than was available under the EU structural funds?