Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether spending on the Places of Worship Renewal Fund has been treated as comparable expenditure for the purposes of the Barnett formula.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport received funding at Spending Review 2025, and the Barnett formula was applied in the usual way to changes in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s DEL budget.

At Spending Reviews, because the Barnett formula is not applied to the individual programmes driving the change in a UK department’s DEL budget, the Barnett consequentials associated with the Places of Worship Renewal Fund cannot be specifically attributed, but were part of the overall calculation.

Funding allocated to the Places of Worship Renewal Fund in England is treated as comparable expenditure for the purposes of calculating Barnett consequentials for Scotland.