Local Authorities: Fair Funding Review

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, as always, the noble Baroness speaks with great experience on climate change. She will know that this policy area tends generally to be directed quite separately, over and above the local government settlement. Certainly, local authorities need to bear these issues in mind; all responsible local authorities recognise their importance, and in many cases addressing them makes perfect economic sense.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the other week, the Prime Minister recognised at last—in the derisorily small offer that she made to a number of Labour MPs for industrial towns—the link between deprivation and those areas that voted most heavily for Brexit. Regardless of what eventually happens on Brexit, do we not need, on a cross-party basis, a substantial long-term commitment to public investment in services, infrastructure and education for those deprived parts of the country that feel most neglected?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, first, I do not think that £1.6 billion can be described as derisory. That may be mathematics to the Liberal Democrats but it is not a true reflection of the amount offered by that programme. This offer was for communities that have been left behind, and had no necessarily causal link with how they had voted. Many of those communities are in the north of England, as the noble Lord would know. It is an important programme and, as he rightly says, we should all get behind it.