Levelling Up

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

I have been a bit tired of seeing my hon. Friend’s face in my social media feeds over the past weeks and months showing him celebrating the various successes as funding and opportunity flows towards his constituency. I am delighted to say that I am a similar beneficiary in the Black Country, because HCLG has decided to move one of its offices to Wolverhampton. It is great to see that this Government are deploying staff around the country to ensure that we level up right across the country. Under no circumstances is that giving up; we are levelling up everywhere.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

During this pandemic South Lakeland has had the biggest increase in unemployment and has the highest proportion of its workforce on furlough of any community in the country, and yet the Government have our community in the bottom priority for levelling-up funding because they are using old pre-pandemic data. The Lake district is Britain’s biggest visitor destination outside London, and so if the Government rethink, using accurate data, and choose to invest in the Lakes line, in rural bus routes, in cycling, and in culture and our visitor economy here, they will not just be preventing hardship in our South Lakeland communities but boosting the whole British economy. So will the Minister rethink?

[Eddie Hughes]

As I said in answer to a previous question, the Government will not be rethinking the data or the methodology that they apply to distributing their funding, but given the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman has set out, I strongly urge that he engages with Ministers in the Department, because, as I have explained, a significant number of funding streams are available, and I would like to think that one of them is a good fit for his constituency.