Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Atherton Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

What I believe in is a Government who make targeted support available to the most vulnerable. The Chancellor and this Government have on a number of occasions used fiscal events and bespoke interventions to support those vulnerable people. We have always been clear that we will not be able to ameliorate the full extent of the challenges facing the country, but we will continue to strive for greater growth and productivity that will bring us back to where we need to be.

[Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con)]

8. What fiscal steps his Department is taking to encourage levelling up across the UK.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)]

The levelling-up White Paper set out a clear plan to level up every corner of the United Kingdom by 2030. At the spending review last autumn, the Government showed how we would deliver our ambitious plan by delivering over £600 billion in gross public sector investment over this Parliament. That includes £4.8 billion in increased investment in local communities through the levelling-up fund, £1.6 billion for the next generation of the British Business Bank’s regional investment fund, and £2.6 billion for the shared prosperity fund.

[Sarah Atherton]

Wrexham’s levelling-up gateway bid has been supported by a 16,000-signature petition to create the first international sporting stadium in north Wales. Does my right hon. Friend agree that people are at the heart of the Government’s levelling-up agenda, and that the amount of people who have signed that petition demonstrates the need for such a scheme in places like Wrexham, which has been ignored by the Welsh Labour Government for 20 years?

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for Wrexham. I remember her coming to see me to talk about the merits of this particular bid, which obviously has enormous popular support; the number of people who have signed her petition testifies to precisely that.