Alison McGovern
Main Page: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Brandon Lewis
When we do the setting every year we look at all the developments in different communities. People are also moving into rural areas. In Norfolk we would class ourselves as rural, but we have a population coming from overseas as well. It is something that we consider across the board.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I am proud to be from Wirral, not least because we are the perfect mix of rural and urban together, but people in Wirral are suffering from the severity of the Government’s cuts, which are linked to deprivation levels. When will the Government say what they will do to tackle deprivation, especially in areas such as Merseyside where it has hit councils so hard?
Brandon Lewis
It is sometimes easy to forget, and I remind the hon. Lady, that an area such as Liverpool has a much higher base start in the first place. A constituency such as mine, which has some very high deprivation, has a spending power of £2,200 per dwelling, whereas Liverpool’s is up at about £3,000. There is a big difference in the first place, and we have to bear that in mind when we are trying to make comparisons between different authorities.