Coastal Communities: East Devon

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) for bringing forward this important Adjournment debate about his area.

It might be helpful if I set the scene with a few facts and figures. I understand entirely the difficulty, the tensions and the problems for coastal and rural councils in delivering services. There is an additionality to cost that is often triggered by a heightening of the age demographic, as the hon. Gentleman said, and by the sparsity of communities. These are not great dense conurbations but small, picturesque villages and hamlets. They are attractive and they support our environment and make an area a lovely place in which to live, but it is not without challenge to deliver public services there. That is being experienced by a lot of councils in those areas.

That is why we listened carefully and closely to those who made representations to us during the evolution of the local government funding settlement. Pausing for a moment, I have made the point before to the hon. Gentleman that a record number of Members of Parliament from across the House came to see officials and me during the official consultation process, to advocate in the strongest possible terms on behalf of their areas. My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) was one of them, but the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton was not. I politely say to him that if one is serious about trying to effect change, an Adjournment debate is an interesting platform on which to do it, but engagement in the proper channels of communication and consultation can often bring forward better results.

[Simon Jupp]

Let me run through a list of some successes in our part of Devon. They include: £15.7 million to help level up Exmouth, including the Dinan Way extension, which the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton mentioned; up to £30 million from South West Water to improve water infrastructure in Sidmouth; £1.4 million to address flooding on the River Sid and River Otter; a new school to replace Tipton St John Primary; our incredible Nightingale Hospital, which is still open and still bringing down waiting lists in my constituency; and, up the line in mid-Devon, which the hon. Gentleman sometimes pretends he represents, Cullompton is getting a new railway station. Meanwhile, Lib Dem-led East Devon District Council failed even to apply for funding for swimming pools, even though it asked me to campaign for it. It is the Lib Dems who are failing the south-west, not the Conservatives.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Maybe the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton is the sort of bloke who complains that he did not win the lottery even though he did not buy a ticket. How could he be expected to win the lottery? You have to be in it to win it.

Of course, not every council bid is going to be successful, but as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, the dynamic effect of levelling up across the United Kingdom is being felt across communities, many of which had felt left behind, ignored, undervalued—call it what you will—by successive Governments of all stripes. If one talks to those in communities that are benefiting directly from the levelling-up initiative, the shared prosperity fund, the future high streets fund and others, there is a real sense of excitement about what can be done in partnership with the local authority, local businesses and the Government to deliver beneficial change.

Although I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon for setting out with such clarity the projects that have been delivered or part-funded, I am slightly annoyed, because he has stolen quite a lot of my remarks. He was a very distinguished local journalist, whose calls I used to relish taking—anything to get my views and thoughts on some local issue on the record. I now quiver slightly when my telephone rings and I see his name flashing, because I know he will ask for further things for his part of Devon and the wider county. He advocates at the heart of Government to ensure that his constituents and others, including those of Tiverton and Honiton, see the benefit of the UK Government’s commitment to levelling up.

We listened to local government and offered an additional £600 million in the local government finance settlement; I know that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton is aware of that. East Devon District Council saw an increase in core spending power of 5.9%, making available a total of £17.4 million for 2024-25. Mid Devon District Council saw an increase of 5.9%, making available a total of £11.6 million, and the county got an increase in core spending power of 7.8%, which is an additional £56.8 million, making available a total of up to £788.8 million for Devon County Council in 2024-25. We have invested £15 billion in a suite of complementary levelling-up projects to help grow the economy, create jobs, improve transport, provide skills training and support local businesses. Perhaps more powerful than even those things, as powerful and efficacious as they are, is the civic pride that the investment lights up in areas such as his—a pride in seeing what can be done, and starting a process that, if successful and guided and managed well, can provide no end of opportunities.

[Richard Foord]

Given the sorts of enterprises that the Minister just described levelling-up funding as being about, can he explain the decision to invest £50,000 in stone chess tables in north-west England?

[Simon Hoare]

There is a rubric for taking decisions. The Department’s levelling-up initiative is, of course, handled by the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my excellent hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young). Each scheme is judged against fixed criteria; if it meets those criteria, it goes into the next round and can ultimately be successful.

I am afraid that I am not in a position to comment on individual schemes, whether successful or not, or on why they have been successful or not. That is something that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton would need to take up with the Under-Secretary, who always makes himself available to colleagues from across the House to discuss the exciting levelling-up initiative.

By my figures, £94.5 million of levelling-up funding has been allocated to Devon, excluding through legacy programmes, and that is in addition to significant long-term devolved funding and powers that we estimate to be worth up to £27 million, so I dispute as a matter of core principle the idea that the hon. Gentleman was trying to posit in my mind, and the mind of the House, that this Government and my party take for granted his part of Devon, or that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon—or indeed any other seat where we have a long history of representation. The Conservative party is a one nation party or it is nothing. We represent the views and aspirations of millions of people. It is why we have been the most successful political party, trying to do our best where we can for all our communities.

The hon. Gentleman was right to say that the terms of reference for levelling up have evolved since it was instigated. It was initially seen as primarily the preserve of post-industrial northern towns, but increasingly we see its power in our rural and coastal communities too. I have set out the figures on Devon’s success with levelling-up proposals; the county is doing incredibly well. Some £16 million in round-two levelling-up funding has been allocated for Destination Exmouth, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon mentioned. East Devon District Council received £1.8 million from the United Kingdom shared prosperity fund. East Devon will also benefit from the fact that the Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership was the recipient of £35.4 million from the Getting Building Fund programme for 2020 to 2022. The community ownership fund has been very powerful in areas such as the hon. Gentleman’s, as it has in mine. It supports initiatives that are of value, including sport centres, arts venues and precious community spaces.

The hon. Gentleman lost me, I have to say, in his speech. At first, I was building sandcastles with half a bucket. He then told us that the beach I was on had pebbles, so that would be a pebble castle, not a sandcastle. I was not entirely sure whether I was putting my jam or the cream on the top or the bottom of the scone. I confess, as I represent the Blackmore vale, the land of the small dairies as described by Thomas Hardy, that I always view cream as a substitute for butter. It is the glue that holds down the jam, so one always puts the cream on first, and tops it with jam, not the other way around. I am not quite sure where the hon. Gentleman was putting his cream or his jam, but I hope he was not putting it on his children or the beach, or in their buckets or all over their spades.

We then had the ad hominem comments about how life is always so much better under the Liberal Democrats, these little rays of buoyant sunshine that fleetingly shine through the clouds of the south-west from time to time, only to disappear behind the broken promises of their tuition fee pledge—and I have little or no doubt that the same will happen again.

This debate allows me to mention something else. I appreciate that this is nothing to do per se with the hon. Gentleman, but he extolled to the House, as his party often does, the sanctity of the Liberal Democrats, who have some sort of higher public calling. We had elections to Dorset Council last week, a neighbouring authority. A lot of people were saying to me how much better the roads are in Dorset than in Devon; we are very happy to exchange contractor details if necessary. One of the most distasteful aspects of last week’s campaign was that a senior member of the hon. Gentleman’s party—the leader, I am told, of a neighbouring authority—spent quite a lot of time telling people, on the doorstep, that a Conservative party candidate had stage 4 lung cancer, was unlikely to see his term out, and would possibly not be as attentive as possible to his public duties as a result of having to receive chemotherapy.

That gentleman, who had served his community steadfastly for years, lost his seat. That is the democratic process, and I make no complaint about it. However, I have to say something that, by God, I have been waiting some years to say this from this Dispatch Box: I will take no lessons on the qualitative assessment, usually self-made by those in the hon. Gentleman’s party, that somehow it is better than mine in instinct and delivery, and in its definition of “public service”. What I have just relayed to the House has come from more than one reliable source. I just hope that his party enjoys its temporary victory in Dorset Council; I am not entirely sure that it is the sort of victory I would have enjoyed.

Let me turn back to the matters at hand. In conclusion, the hon. Gentleman has spoken for his community, and I am grateful to him for doing so. I hope that I have given him, the House, his constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon the figures and facts. I absolutely underscore our commitment to the hon. Gentleman’s area, to the whole south-west, and to any and all of our communities in the UK where need is identified, and where the good offices of His Majesty’s Government can be deployed to help things along.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the local government funding settlement in the round being more bespoke and digital, rather than analogue; it must also take account of the times and demands, given that, as he and I have discussed, there has been a change in the demographics in his part of Devon and elsewhere in the south-west. We are committed to doing just that in the next Parliament. If I am in post then, I look forward to working with colleagues from across the House. If, cross party, we can find a solution that holds water, can withstand scrutiny and can sustain local government, and all the good work that it seeks to do, for the next 10, 15 or 20 years, rather than having short-term fixes, the landscape of local government and public service delivery for our communities will be very much improved. I hope that my reply has been of help to him, and of interest to his constituents.

Question put and agreed to.