Capital Projects: Spending Decisions

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think my noble friend is speaking about the significant failures in Thurrock, Croydon and Slough. These authorities have asked the Government for flexibility to increase their council tax by an additional amount. Given the exceptional financial difficulties which, I have to say, were driven by poor decision-making in the past, the Government felt that we should not oppose their request. It is important that the councils remain working to deliver services, but I assure the House that we are working with them, challenging them, and have people in there to make sure that they improve and recover.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, is not the levelling-up money—whatever pots the noble Baroness mentions that there might be—pitiful compared with the £180 billion of austerity cuts taken mostly out of those local communities that need levelling up? Surely what is needed, rather than prettifying town centres and projects like that, is investment in local skills in the local economy to build the new economies of the future, to make these communities have some hope instead of despair.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, if you look at the missions in the levelling-up Bill, you can see that all those things are important. It is up to local authorities, though, together with the private sector and the voluntary sector, to put forward their ideas in their places, as to how they feel that they can deliver those improvements, such as economic investment in their area. It is up to local authorities—but I agree with the noble Lord that there are many more things that we can do in order to encourage, in those particular areas, a true economic development.