Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

The hon. Member is a hard-working member of the Select Committee, and he will know that we are only able to delve so far into the functioning of devolved Administrations. However, we did conclude in our inquiry that leaders in the devolved Administrations should be around the table with local and regional leaders in discussions with Ministers in Whitehall, so that we do have a joined-up and collaborative approach to delivering on a shared objective to level up the whole of the United Kingdom.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and his Committee on this very serious report, which shows undeniably that the Government lack any clarity as to what they mean by levelling up. In fact, the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) said this week:

“One of the things about ‘levelling up’ is…it’s quite a sort of ambiguous phrase—it means whatever anyone wants it to mean”,

but clearly that should not be the case.

It is at least welcome that there is now political consensus that for too long the UK has been scarred by deep regional inequalities. The single biggest challenge for levelling up is that people have to leave their regions and head south to get good work. This has to change, and it can only happen by making the quantity and quality of jobs in regions our priority. Levelling up must be about investment to combat those inequalities, including between regions, within regions and between socioeconomic groups across the whole of the UK.

Can I ask the Chair, first, what his Committee’s conclusions were in relation to fair funding for levelling up, particularly in the light of how the levelling-up fund’s piecemeal funding does not make up for the failure of austerity over the last decade, with services decimated as £15 billion of cuts have been made to local government? Secondly, on extending democratic power, what is his Committee’s view on how we should reach consensus on which tiers of devolved and local government should have responsibility for achieving those important shared levelling-up outcomes, because quite clearly this can no longer be done from the centre?

[Darren Jones]

I thank the shadow spokesperson for those points, and for her kind remarks about the work of my Committee. On the funding allocation, of course the issue here is that if there is not a clear strategy about what levelling up is and therefore clear funding allocated to it, it is unclear what funding is being made available above and beyond the day-to-day functioning of government, and indeed in comparison with historical funding cuts through periods of austerity and following our withdrawal from the European Union. Because of that lack of clarity, we have no answer as to how local communities can fairly bid for funding for the levelling-up agenda, above and beyond what already exists through the day-to-day work of government.

On democratic engagement in defining local economic areas, that of course is a very difficult issue. It is one we did not delve into in any great detail in our own inquiry, not least because it goes a little beyond the remit of our Select Committee powers. However, we do recognise that there needs to be more consistency across England in democratic structures so that there is an equality of capacity to bid to Whitehall for funding in advance of—this is my personal view—a more devolved level of decision making and funding across England in the years ahead.