Boris Johnson’s flagship “Levelling Up” pledge was “a hollow slogan”, a communities minister has warned, amid fears Labour’s neighbourhoods investment plan is a “fig leaf” to mask Rachel Reeves’s budget decisions.
Miatta Fahnbulleh and Conservative shadow minister David Simmonds traded blows as they discussed the Government’s up-to-£5 billion 10-year Pride in Place programme.
Under the proposals, MPs and councillors will join neighbourhood boards to develop neighbourhood regeneration plans, in partnership with town halls.
“Our neighbourhoods are the nation’s barometer, whether all of us in this House are doing our jobs,” Ms Fahnbulleh, the communities minister, told the Commons.
“And under 14 years of Conservative failure, the needle of that barometer has increasingly pointed in the wrong direction.
“The effect of this decline in pride in place has been corrosive – it has eroded people’s trust in politics and the state, it has created a sense of unfairness that some places have fared better than others, and has opened the door to the plastic patriots in the Reform party who say there is a simple answer.
“So, let me say from the start that we are under no illusions that both the causes and the answers to this decline are complex – the failure of the party opposite to properly fund local government, the sharp transition away from industry, and the broken Tory promises of ‘Levelling Up’ must shoulder part of the blame.”
Ms Fahnbulleh also warned: “Our economic situation means that we are not in a position to cover everywhere that would benefit from this programme.”
She said the Government had “prioritised places with the highest level of need”.
Responding, Mr Simmonds warned that pubs had been “hammered by the business rate rises” under Labour.
Town halls “are facing maxing out the council tax”, he added, in a move “not to invest in new local services, but to pay an additional £1.5 billion of annual costs imposed on them by this Government’s job tax that makes them £1.5 billion net worse off when it comes to delivering local services”.
He continued: “What we see is a fig leaf, an element relabelled from past programmes like the long-term plan for towns, slightly redirected to Labour areas, that covers up a collapse in the ability of our elected local representatives to invest in their communities, as in so many things.”
Mr Simmonds asked: “Why not just give the councils the money to get on with this?”
Ms Fahnbulleh replied that she was “disappointed by the lack of contrition, by the failure to say ‘sorry’”.
She continued: “They presided over 14 years of failure in which, over a period of austerity, local civic institutions were denuded, where communities that were deprived were hollowed out.
“He says that we’re funding areas of deprivation – because we actually care about funding areas of deprivation.
“So candidly, if I was sitting on the record of the last government, I would not be standing there giving us lectures.”
Decisions to give certain areas money over others were based mainly “on two metrics – the metric of multiple deprivation and community need”, the minister added.
Navendu Mishra, the Labour MP for Stockport, branded the “Levelling Up” term “a levelling down agenda in terms of opportunity, ambition and trust”.
The Conservatives turned Ms Fahnbulleh’s department into the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, but its former title – the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – was reinstated last year.
Ms Fahnbulleh replied: “‘Levelling Up’ was a hollow slogan.
“We’ve seen from the records that there was no substance behind it.
“Unlike the party opposite, we are doing to job of investing in our communities, putting them in the driving seat.”
Commons culture, media and sport committee chairwoman Dame Caroline Dinenage said she feared council efforts “to siphon some of this money off to bankroll one of their vanity projects”.
The Conservative MP for Gosport asked: “While I’m really pleased that this funding comes with some flexibility, what protections is the minister going to put in place to stop this money being frittered away on white elephants by unscrupulous local councils?”
Ms Fahnbulleh replied: “What I will say is that we are very, very clear that local communities should be in the driving seat.
“The funding is flowing through the councils because they have accounting officer responsibility, but the decision needs to be made by the neighbourhood board.”
