Community Renewal Fund and Levelling Up Fund in Wales

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees, and I apologise for my delay in making it to the Chamber. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) on securing this debate.

The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) said that we should be outcome focused, and I absolutely agree, but I also argue that good processes help to deliver good outcomes. The initial deadline of 18 June means there were 74 working days, in the context of responding to the pandemic, for local authorities to process what was needed and to make applications. That is clearly insufficient time. For the community renewal fund, the spending must be completed by 31 March 2022. Therefore, applications are limited to projects that are ready to go, rather than those that would take a longer time and arguably deliver better outcomes. I reiterate the point made by the right hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns): this disadvantages smaller local authorities that do not have the same capacity and will not have an ongoing programme of funding bids.

Previously, 40% of Welsh apprenticeships were funded by EU structural funds. The current funding will provide £220 million to the whole UK. Wales, as many Members have said, is guaranteed at least 5% of that, which is £11 million. I struggle to see how else that can be explained other than as a loss of over £300 million of funding to Wales. The prospectuses of both funds stress that they are competitive and point to the need to get value for money. That intrinsically suggests that the process is driven by cost savings and not communities.

Other Members have mentioned the process of how the two funds have been created and that their formation has not been transparent. The Welsh Government do not appear to have had any meaningful engagement. This lack of transparency makes it appear, at the very least, as if that information has been given strategically to Conservative Members of Parliament. Both funds state that the only role of the Welsh Government in the decision-making process is to consult as appropriate. Ultimately, this is the centralisation of a decision-making process and it omits the devolved Administration.

I conclude with two questions that I would like the Minister to address today. Given the importance of maintaining strong UK relationships—as a Scottish MP, I take an interest from that perspective, too—will the Secretary of State and the Minister commit to a meaningful relationship with the Welsh Government in the formation and administration of the UK shared prosperity fund? Was it discussed at last week’s four nations meeting? When will Parliament receive a full read-out of that meeting from the Government?

Secondly, can we get a clear outcome on how the Government plan to meet their pledge that Wales will not lose out on funding that it previously received from the EU, including whether certain areas and priorities will lose funding?