Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take in response to their statistics and reports on the English Indices of Deprivation 2019, published on 26 September.

The Government is committed to levelling up every part of the UK - unemployment is down 1.2 million since 2010 while wages continue to rise at their fastest in over a decade. We’re supporting families with their cost of living and providing more support to the most deprived authorities, which now have a spending power 16% higher per home than the least deprived. For those who need extra support, the UK Government spends over £95 billion a year, including for those who are on a low income.

Following our departure from the EU, we will create the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), a programme of investment designed to tackle inequalities between communities by raising productivity.

The Government recently announced 100 places which will be invited to develop proposals for our £3.6 billion Towns Fund - 45 of these places are in the Northern Powerhouse and 30 in the Midlands Engine, demonstrating our commitment to the whole country. The fund will deliver transformative investment in transport, digital, skills and culture in order to boost productivity and sustainably raise living standards in towns across the country.

The Chancellor confirmed in August that the National Infrastructure Strategy will be published in Autumn 2019. The Strategy will set out the Government’s plans to deliver a step change in infrastructure investment to support the UK economy, as well as providing a formal response to the NIC’s National Infrastructure Assessment. As part of his Spending Round speech, the Chancellor set out his ambitions to deliver an infrastructure revolution, which included a commitment to use increased infrastructure investment to support growth and productivity across the whole of the UK.