Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Patricia Gibson

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

It was an absolute pleasure to meet the Modha family and see the inspirational work happening in my hon. Friend’s constituency. In our primary care recovery plan we are learning some lessons from that work, particularly about focusing GPs’ time on the jobs only they can do—hence the investment in the extra 29,000 additional roles reimbursement scheme staff, the detailed plan in the primary care recovery plan to improve communication between hospitals and GPs, the cutting back of unnecessary bureaucracy, and the freeing up of resources by simplifying the investment and impact fund and the quality and outcomes framework. It is brilliant to learn from the inspirational work happening in his constituency.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

Recent research from the Nuffield Trust shows that Brexit—a Brexit supported by both the Government and the Labour party, it has to be said—has worsened the shortage of NHS staff across the UK. Indeed, it has led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the national health services across the UK, due to higher costs, increased bureaucracy and uncertainty over visas. Can the Minister tell me whether that is one of the success stories of Brexit that we keep hearing about?

[Neil O’Brien]

International recruitment is up. In fact, we have 38,000 more doctors and 54,000 more nurses in the NHS than in 2010. In England at least, we are taking every step we can to draw on that international talent and we are using it to grow staffing in the NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Patricia Gibson

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

I have mentioned the fact that the number of NHS dentists was up 2% to 2.3% last year, as well as the extra £50 million and the reforms we have made to the contract, but we will go further. We want to address those areas, and particularly rural areas, where more provision is urgently needed.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

The chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners has expressed concerns about patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes and even serious mental health conditions refusing sick notes because they cannot afford time off work. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with Cabinet colleagues about the adequacy of statutory sick pay during this cost of living crisis?

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Patricia Gibson

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

There is a lot of interest in the idea of levelling up and its lofty and laudable aims, but warm words and good intentions, of themselves, will not reduce inequality across the UK. There is a real flaw in the Bill’s lack of accountability and ownership of each of the 12 levelling-up missions on the part of individual UK Government Departments. Amendments 3, 5, 10 and 12 and new clause 1 seek to address that lack of accountability.

Of course, the Government have given themselves the power to move the goalposts, change their targets, and look as if they are doing what they said they would do even if they are not. Rather than merely marking their own homework, they are also ready to lower the pass mark of the test if they fail it. That tells us how important the Government’s levelling-up plans are. If they really had the confidence in this flagship commitment that they profess to have, why would there be any baulking about objectively measuring their progress on levelling up?

These amendments seek to lock independent scrutiny of the progress of levelling up into this flagship Bill. Here we are, having to debate it, when it should be taken as read. The Institute for Public Policy Research has also called for an independent body, established in law, to oversee and judge the UK’s progress on levelling up. What Government with true confidence in their ability to deliver their goals, as this Government say they have, would resist that kind of scrutiny and accountability? Surely they would exalt in it; it would be the opportunity to demonstrate their success. What have this Government to fear from transparent and objective allocation mechanisms for delivery? The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Government know that there is more bluster here than actual substance.

True levelling up, of course, requires actual investment, but the necessary financial backing appears to be absent. Any investment must be delivered in a non-partisan and transparent way. Let us not forget that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that departmental budgets will actually be lower in 2025 than they were in 2010. How that chimes with and supports the idea of levelling up is something that I am struggling to understand.

Levelling up is an admirable principle, but if the Government are confident that they can deliver, as they say they are, what possible objection can there be to scrutiny? With such attempts to avoid independent scrutiny, it feels as if there is agenda beyond levelling up. If the levelling-up missions do not have the effect of reducing inequality across the UK, then they will have objectively failed in their goal. These amendments seek to measure that progress. Who can object to that?

If the very foundation of the Bill—the ability to deliver greater equality across the UK—is not open to full and transparent, evaluative, published scrutiny, and if that is not written into the Bill, the very principles on which it purports to stand are built on sand, will not inspire confidence and, I fear, will not deliver. I absolutely agree that we do not need the fanfare of a Bill to reduce inequality; it could just be done—a Bill is not needed. A Bill whose stated aims are not open to transparency and independent scrutiny is definitely not a Bill we need, and we are right to be sceptical.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Neil O'Brien)]

It is a pleasure to begin line-by-line scrutiny of this important Bill with you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. We have a very distinguished Committee and I look forward to some thoughtful and enlightening debates.

The Government’s defining mission is to level up our country—to close the gap in productivity, health, incomes and opportunity between different parts of the country. That goal is made all the more urgent in the face of cost of living pressures and the inequalities laid bare and deepened by the pandemic.

The levelling-up White Paper sets out that levelling up is a moral, social and economic programme for the whole of Government, not just one Department, to spread opportunity and prosperity more equally throughout the country. The Bill sets out the framework for delivering on our levelling-up missions and places a statutory duty on the Government for the first time to set missions to reduce geographic disparities and to produce an annual report on our progress.

The Government absolutely recognise that scrutiny and seeking expert advice will be important to ensuring that we deliver on our missions and level up the country. That is why we have established the Levelling Up Advisory Council, chaired by Andy Haldane, former chief economist at the Bank of England, to provide the Government with expert advice to inform the design and delivery of the missions.

The council is made up of an expert and distinguished group of people. It includes Katherine Bennett, chief executive officer of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and chair of the Western Gateway, which brings together the research and development strengths of the Bristol region with south Wales; Sir Tim Besley and Sir Paul Collier, two of our most distinguished economists from the London School of Economics and Oxford; Cathy Gormley-Hennan from Ulster University; Sally Mapstone, principal of the University of St Andrews; Laxman Narasimhan from Reckitt Benckiser; Sacha Romanovitch from Fair4All Finance; Hayaatun Sillem, chief executive officer of the Royal Academy of Engineering; and Sir Nigel Wilson, chief executive of Legal and General. These are very independent-minded people—serious people with deep expertise. The reason why we have brought them together is that we respect and value independent, thoughtful, expert advice.

The Government are committed to enabling Parliament, the public and other experts outside the advisory panel to fully scrutinise progress against our missions. The proposed initial set of metrics have already been published in the levelling-up White Paper, in the technical annex—40 pages, which give all the different ways we will measure all the different missions in incredible, unprecedented detail. I do not remember such detail under any previous Government. The metrics were published in the White Paper and will be refined over time. The analysis included in the annual report to Parliament will be based on the metrics that are here and included in the statement of levelling-up missions that will be laid before the House.

Given the level of transparency and reporting, and the level of input from deep experts, it is unclear what value an independent body would add. The Government will be required to report on set missions within set metrics and methodologies. Instead of creating a new independent body, the Government believe that levelling-up missions can be better supported by focusing on delivering those missions themselves—by getting on with it, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said. It is also wrong to argue that without an independent body, the Government’s progress towards delivering missions will not be subject to independent external scrutiny. Parliament, the public, think-tanks and civil society will all have an opportunity to comment and report on how well the Government deliver missions, in response to our annual reports.

[Patricia Gibson]

This has just occurred to me as the Minister has been speaking. I am curious: if child poverty does not reduce, will the levelling-up programme and mission be considered a success or a failure?

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Lady raises a really important point. The last Labour Government had a statutory child poverty target; that target was literally locked into legislation. Was it hit? It was not hit, no. That is why we have adopted the approach that we have; just writing something into law does not mean that it happens, unfortunately. That is why we have created the independent architecture around levelling-up missions: to provide both really serious external expertise in the work that we are doing—I do not think anybody disputes the fact that these are really independent, serious people; and an unprecedented level of detail, to give everybody who wants to criticise the programme all the resources and exact detail they need to do just that. I do not remember any of those things happening under previous Governments.

Missions are intended to anchor Government policy and decision making to level up the UK. However they should not be set in stone. As the economy adapts, so too might the missions, to reflect the changing environment and lessons learned. Of course, some of these things can be tightened over time; we have made remarkable progress on our missions to roll out Project Gigabit and the Shared Rural Network, which are a £5 billion intervention and £1 billion intervention respectively. Over the course of just the last two years, they have transformed the availability of gigabit internet and rural 4G.

Opposition Front-Benchers said, “Why do you have to change some of the missions? That seems very dodgy to us.” Some of the missions will literally have to change. For example, one of the missions that I am very proud of is the one to increase domestic public R&D spending outside the greater south-east of England by a third over the period covered by the spending review. Of course, that prompts the question, “What will happen after the spending review?” We will have to change that mission, otherwise it will just become meaningless. Things have to adapt over time, of course, and I think that everyone recognises that levelling up is a long-term mission; nobody thinks that any of these things, some of which are century-long problems, can be solved in the course of one or two years.

However, the Opposition Front-Benchers made a very important point: the Bill sets out that any changes to missions should be—indeed, have to be—fully and transparently explained and justified through a statement to Parliament where they occur. Nothing will happen without Parliament knowing about it.

Hon. Members on the Opposition front page—Freudian slip; Front Bench—would recognise that some of the missions will just have to change over time; there is no point locking in a three-year mission for the next 30 years. This layer of transparency enables the public and civil society at large to comment on the Government’s decisions. It is unclear what additional benefit an independent body would bring. The Bill sets out that any changes to missions should be fully and transparently explained and justified where they occur. The missions will be rolling endeavours.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson]

Amendment 13 would place

“a responsibility on the Government to publish the resources made available to communities in order to level-up”.

Who could argue with that? In not arguing with it, I cannot help reminding the Minister that Scotland was promised a £1.5-billion-a-year bonanza as part of the Brexit windfall. Of course, the reality is that Scotland has received 40% less funding than it did under the EU funding agenda, and it has suffered a 5.2% cut in its resource budget and a 9.7% cut in its capital budget. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how that supports the levelling-up agenda, because I certainly cannot understand. It is quite galling that as this Government show disrespect to devolved Parliaments—democratically elected Parliaments—by impinging on devolved powers and bypassing the democratic will of the Scottish people in devolved areas, they simultaneously cut their budget in the context of levelling up.

Despite the stated goals of the legislation, the Minister has been unable to say—perhaps he will do so when he gets to his feet—whether the levelling-up missions would result in a reduction in inequality to the point where we would see a reduction in child poverty. What kind of levelling-up commitment would not address the basic social scourge of child poverty? I cannot think what the point of any of this is if we are not committed to tackling that most basic and serious ill.

Of course, as we have heard, we do not need a fanfare to tackle inequality; we just need to get on and do it. We can exalt in our success if indeed we have it, but we do not need a Bill that runs to hundreds of pages but cannot even commit to transparency or to publishing details of the resources that it is willing to use.

In Scotland, the Scottish Government have tried, with their limited powers, to instigate levelling up—for example, with the Scottish child payment of £20 per child per week. That is real levelling up, and these are the kinds of measures that the Bill really ought to tackle to build a more inclusive society. As food bank use rises, we have a real opportunity if we are serious about levelling up, but it takes targeted political will and a determination to tackle the causes of inequality. That is not an easy thing to do—we have to put in a real shift—but a Bill that runs to a few hundred pages with vague missions that objectively cannot be held to account will not convince anybody.

It is clear to see that the resources for true levelling up will not be made available, certainly from the Scottish perspective with the figures I have cited. For all the warm words, and there have been many, it is difficult to have confidence that our communities will see any tangible difference as a result of this fanfare—sorry, this Bill. The Government should have no problem with amendment 13, because they know that no levelling up can happen without resources. Presumably, if they are serious about levelling up, those resources will be committed, so why not publish them? Why do the Government not exalt in their success and the resources they are willing to expend? If this levelling-up Bill and agenda do not reduce inequality or tackle poverty, child poverty or child hunger, I honestly cannot see the point of them.

[Neil O'Brien]

I agree completely with the spirit behind the amendment, and we are actively working to bring about what Opposition Members want. However, we do not think the amendment works, and I will explain why. Official statistics about public spending in different places are widely available already. Her Majesty’s Treasury already publishes a regional breakdown for total current and capital identifiable expenditure per head through PESA—Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses—which is my favourite regional statistical document.

We are also taking steps to improve the quality of spatial data. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has established a new spatial data unit to drive forward the data transformation required in central Government. It is frustrating to us that many of the types of data that should have existed for years still do not. The spatial data unit supports the delivery of levelling up by transforming the way the UK Government gather, store and use sub-national data, so that it can underpin transparent and open policy making and delivery decisions. It is completely in that spirit that we are acting to improve data on all levels.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Patricia Gibson

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O'Brien]

Q This question is mainly for Sacha and Rich. It is about high street rental auctions, which the Bill introduces. As well as being an opportunity to improve our high streets and regenerate the local economy, do you think they are an opportunity for voluntary groups, small businesses and social enterprises to get themselves a place on the high street? How would you like to see community involvement in that high street rental auction process work?

Rich Bell: We were very encouraged by the detail of this proposal. We were very pleased to see that the Bill defines high street use in a way that recognises the use of high street premises as a communal meeting space. It is incredibly important that the legislation recognises that high streets are not just drivers of local economies; they are the sites of the bumping spaces and the meeting places that stitch together our social fabric. It is similarly positive that the Bill’s local benefit condition recognises the social and environmental benefits of high street premises as well as their economic benefits.

We encourage the Government to consider how they can shape accompanying regulations to ensure that local authorities feel that they have permission to work with social enterprises and local community organisations, and to shape their own criteria for high street auctions, so that those community organisations can gain access to high street sites. As I say, we were encouraged by the detail.

Sacha Bedding: High streets are absolutely about pride. There is nothing worse than seeing boarded-up places. The opportunity for local ownership and activity will help. People are full of ideas on how to do that. I will not go on too long; we absolutely agree with what Rich said, and there will be any amount of ideas, not just focused around retail, on how people can help make their high streets thriving places again.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

Q I noted your comments, Mr Bell, about the importance of team spirit in levelling up communities. Do you have any thoughts or comments about the fact that the Scottish Government will not be involved at the decision-making stage in the allocation of levelling-up funding? That suggests that there will be implications for duplication, the inefficient use of resources, and lack of strategic overview.

Rich Bell: My only comment would be to say that it seems incredibly important, when taking what is a pretty radical step in promoting sub-regional devolution across England, to do so in a joined-up way which involves dialogue with all the national Governments across the UK. That said, I would say that the problem in the Bill is not the lack of emphasis on sub-regional and national devolution; the problem is the lack of emphasis on devolution at the most local level, as Sacha said, and the complete absence of genuine community leadership.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Patricia Gibson

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Patricia Gibson]

Q Do you think it would be helpful or desirable for an independent body to oversee and assess the UK Government’s progress on levelling up?

Mairi Spowage: Through the Bill, my understanding is that the UK Government have to publish regular updates on the progress that they are making towards the missions that it sets out and the metrics chosen to measure success. There is quite a lot of work to do to ensure that those metrics cover the whole of the UK on all the different missions. There is a significant amount of investment—I believe that the ONS is looking to try to do that better, but it is not for me to say whether an independent body should be set up to monitor what is, after all, a UK Government policy agenda that they can legitimately pursue.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Professor Spowage, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us this morning. The Bill creates statutory requirements around the levelling ambitions that we were just discussing. One of those is on digital connectivity. Through Project Gigabit and the shared rural network, Scotland is likely to see particularly large increases in connectivity. How do we best drive growth, particularly in more rural parts of Scotland? How do we best measure progress in the roll-out of connectivity? Do you agree that the rise of online working is, potentially, a strong tailwind for the rural Scottish economy?

Mairi Spowage: Yes, if and when digital connectivity is of sufficient quality it will present a lot of opportunities for the rural economy. We still hear in parts of Scotland that it is a barrier to remote working. It would be hugely transformative for lots of areas, particularly of rural Scotland, but I am sure that lots of other rural parts of the UK would say the same. It would be transformative in terms of the connectivity of people working from home, perhaps for businesses in population centres but also for businesses that are operating in these areas, to have a more reliable connection. It could be extremely transformative to those areas.

We have heard from some of our work with businesses that to a certain extent it can also work the other way. Businesses based in remote and rural Scotland are employing people in the big population centres, but sometimes having to pay them more money because they are more likely to command higher wages in those areas, particularly in this very tight labour market that we have at the moment.

Improvements in digital connectivity present huge opportunities for rural Scotland. As much as there is quite a lot of focus on transport connectivity through the levelling-up funds, investment UK-wide—particularly in rural areas—in digital connectivity is one of the areas where we could get the biggest bang for our buck in transforming the economy and reducing regional inequality, particularly when we look at the population outlook if current trends continue in rural areas.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Patricia Gibson

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson, Patricia Gibson.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

Despite the bullish posturing, the Minister knows that households across the UK are suffering terrible hardship because of the cost of living crisis, which has the Tories’ name written all over it. Despite the rhetoric, the reality is that Scotland’s resource budget allocation has been cut by Westminster by 5.2%, and the capital budget allocation has been cut by Westminster by 9.7% in real terms. How can he claim to support economic growth across the UK when the Scottish Government’s ability to support business, investment and people through the cost of living crisis can only be severely constrained by these cuts?

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Lady talks about Scottish public spending. The truth is that the record block grant that Scotland has just received is the biggest settlement since devolution—it is huge. For every £100 of spending elsewhere, there is £126 of public spending in Scotland. The implication in the hon. Lady’s question is just not correct.

Shared Prosperity Fund: Devolved Administrations

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Patricia Gibson

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien]

I think that innovation accelerator is terribly exciting, but I can guarantee to the hon. Lady that as part of UKSPF we are engaging at all levels with devolved Governments and other local partners with important expertise. We will also be setting up an inter-ministerial group, with ministerial representation from all the devolved Governments, so that we have a regular forum on the breadth of my Department’s work to discuss these matters and to ensure there is an open dialogue across the whole UK.

The UKSPF has been designed to empower local places in all four nations of the UK. My Department is engaging with local government associations—including the Local Government Association, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Northern Ireland Local Government Association and the Welsh Local Government Association—ahead of and following the publication of the pre-launch guidance.

We will continue to engage with the devolved Governments and wider partners on the design and operation of the fund so that we can get the best outcomes across all the UK, because there are so many different priorities. The hon. Member for Strangford talked about fishing communities, and we heard from the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) about important community groups. There are many different partners that we have to engage in shaping this important programme.

We are engaging with the Northern Ireland Executive at an official level regarding the concerns they raised about programmes that are currently running under the European social fund. That dialogue will help to push on arrangements that maximise that fund delivery in Northern Ireland. However, it is worth thinking about the totality of these different funds because, as well as the shared prosperity fund, we also have the levelling-up fund and the community renewal fund, which is a one-year fund to transition us on to the UKSPF.

For Northern Ireland alone, if we look at some of those different sources of funding, my Department has provided £49 million via the levelling-up fund, £12 million as part of the community renewal fund, and funding through the community ownership fund, which enables different community groups to take things into community ownership. At the same time, we have made important long-term commitments in Northern Ireland, as in Scotland and Wales, through the city and growth deals. In Northern Ireland, those are worth £670 million—funding that is being matched by the Northern Ireland Executive. That is in addition to Northern Ireland-specific schemes, such as Peace Plus.

One of the challenges on my mind, as a Minister, is how we can all work together to ensure that the schemes work in such a way that they are more than the sum of their parts. I am conscious that there are a number of different schemes there; how do we ensure that the totality of the opportunities in Northern Ireland, which are very exciting, are best served by the confluence of all these different funding streams? It is useful, through t UKSPF, to have some funding that is not challenge-based but formula-based, and therefore, in that sense, a bit more flexible to provide bits of match funding to complement those other, existing funding streams.

[Patricia Gibson]

The Minister mentioned the importance of his Government working in partnership with the devolved Governments. I am sure we are all pleased to hear that. Would he therefore like to comment on the conclusion of the House of Lords Constitution Committee in its report in January that the UK Government have ignored—and continue to ignore—devolution and the devolved Governments in this process?

[Neil O'Brien]

There will always be a range of views on these questions. As my Secretary of State set out in his evidence to the Scottish Parliament the other day, our strong belief is that all these things will work best if we can engage not just the devolved Governments but local partners across the whole the UK.

It is worth putting these issues in the context of the wider funding settlement, as well as the funds that are specific for regeneration and community renewal. In the spending review, hon. Members will have seen that we have £15 billion for Northern Ireland annually for the next three years—the highest figure since devolution. There will be £41 billion for Scotland—again, the highest figure since devolution—and £18 billion for Wales, which is, again, the largest figure, in real terms, since devolution. So the context is that of a wider public spending settlement, and although we would always like to have more money to do things, that will enable us to do some really important things for some communities, particularly in Northern Ireland, which experienced extremely high levels of deprivation—I think that we would all recognise that.

Hon. Members have raised some of the things that the community renewal fund is doing. I would stress some of the positive things that that funding is doing, which leads into the work of the shared prosperity fund. The hon. Member for Belfast South rightly quoted the wise comment of her former leader that the best peace process is a job.

The hon. Member for North Down stressed the importance of skills—again, quite rightly. The community renewal fund is giving half a million pounds to the NOW Group to support people with disabilities through specialised employment academies and job mentoring. It is also giving nearly half a million pounds to South West College, Southern Regional College and Queen’s University Belfast to upskill construction operatives to fill that skills gap, and there will be just over £500,000 for a hydrogen training academy to deliver training for 180 people, to get a skilled workforce that can take advantage of the exciting opportunities that are opening up in Northern Ireland in hydrogen and clean technology. Those funds are doing a great deal of good. By working together, we will get the most out of these different spending streams.

The hon. Member for North Down asked a specific and very important question about section 75. We understand the importance of respecting the unique equalities considerations in Northern Ireland. We recognise the importance of not only meeting our legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010 but giving due regard to the additional equalities considerations that apply in Northern Ireland. I hope it is obvious from the tenor of my comments and from what I have said today that we are always—always—keen to have solutions that are felt to be fair by all communities and that see all communities working together.

I thank hon. Members, who have put forward genuinely important points in today’s debate. Over the coming weeks, we will work with other parts of the Government—represented here today—as well as partners across the UK, to finalise our policy development. Later in the spring, we intend to publish the full UK shared prosperity fund prospectus.

I hope I have got across in my comments the sense that our intent is not to go over the heads of anybody but to enable devolved Governments, local government and other partners to shape what is done in different parts of the UK and where the money goes, and to be involved in generating and contributing ideas at all levels, so that we can make the most of the opportunities that we collectively share. That is the tenor of where we are coming from on this entire agenda.

Once we have done that—we will be doing it, as Members can probably tell from the meetings I have talked about that are under way or that are forthcoming— we will publish the full UK shared prosperity fund prospectus. We want to try to keep the process as simple as we can so that we can give local partners the information they need to begin investment planning. I genuinely look forward to working with hon. Members from across this House; a number of them have already come to me with important suggestions and ideas about things we can do on this agenda. I look forward to working with all Members who are here today to deliver on our shared ambition.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Patricia Gibson

Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Gentleman says that the scheme has not delivered anything. I was in Norwich on Friday opening the first project ever funded by the towns fund. Whether it is the towns fund, the future high streets fund, the community renewal fund, the shared prosperity fund or the levelling-up fund, this Government are determined to put the financial firepower behind communities’ ambitions across this entire United Kingdom, so that we can level up and unite this country.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

The Institute for Public Policy Research has pointed out that the UK shared prosperity funding of £1.5 billion from 2025 falls far short of the £11 billion that would have been received from the EU between 2021 and 2027. Will the Minister explain why the UK Government have not delivered on their promise to replace EU structural funds in full?

[Neil O'Brien]

The UK Government will match the spending that different places had through the EU. We have had a delighted reaction from many of the places across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that have secured funding through the different routes that are now available, and we have all the additional flexibility and a reduction in the bureaucracy of those old EU schemes. The replacement funding not only matches the quantum of the funding that we used to get through the EU, but gets rid of that unnecessary bureaucracy.