Levelling-up Fund Round 2: Bidding Process

That is utter nonsense. I am not going to repeat what the right hon. Gentleman just said. Lots of funding is going into both areas. That is our taxpayers’ money as well. Why should the Scottish Government increase taxes—they cannot do it in year—when we have already sent the taxes down here? We are supposed to get some of them back; we are supposed to get more of them back than we have been. Incidentally—this is turning into a response to the right hon. Gentleman, although I am not sure he is listening—the people of Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in Europe. If we had stayed in Europe, almost double what was available in the levelling-up fund would be available to the whole of the UK. I think he needs to think about what he is saying; I think he is well aware of what he is saying and the implications.

Then we look at who got the funding. While my constituency and other Glasgow constituencies got nothing, the Prime Minister’s wealthy constituency was awarded £19 million. It simply exposes the lie of levelling up for what it is—just another way for the Conservatives to funnel public money to their own pet projects. The idea of spreading the funding evenly around the UK is somehow a fair way to do it is total nonsense. To properly address inequality and deprivation, we have to do more than just throw a few pounds at communities every once in a while. We need to pump money and support into the places that need it, and we need to do it again and again. That takes a level of courage and conviction that the Westminster Government simply are not showing.

That got me thinking that perhaps we are not all on the same page and that the Government have no desire to address underlying inequality and deprivation. I wondered why, and I can only conclude that the UK Government blame the people and communities living with serious levels of deprivation for that deprivation. Do the Government have an ideological belief that it is somehow the fault of the people in those communities, and that they should just leave them to it? I do not know what other conclusion can be reached.

Let me be clear where we in the SNP stand: the systemic problems at the heart of too many of our communities, including Possilpark and Easterhouse, stem from the contraction of people’s incomes and the erosion of the social safety net after 13 years of Tory austerity. The Tory Government are to blame, not the people themselves.

The leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken, wrote to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to set out just how bad a deal it has been for Glasgow as a whole. She pointed out that only 3.7% of the funding allocated to Scotland was received by Glasgow, but that if that had been based on population size, it should have been three times as much. Councillor Aitken goes on to say that, had the allocation been based on the proportion of people living in deprivation, it would have been an eye-watering 15 times as much. That was the criterion for EU funding, which the levelling-up fund was supposed to replace when we were dragged out of Europe against our will—as I said.

I will end by asking four questions. The Minister should bear in mind that the officers and councillors of Glasgow City Council, Glasgow MPs and MSPs and, most importantly, the people of Glasgow are all waiting for the answers. First, why were we and others told to submit bids and then told that we were not eligible, because we had had a small amount of funding in round 1? Secondly, what is the thinking that says divvy it up equally, despite the fact that people and communities do not live equal lives? Thirdly, will there be a round 3 and, if so, how can we be sure that there is a point to committing the time and money it will take to bid for it? Finally, will the UK Government reimburse Glasgow City Council the estimated £500,000 cost of submitting bids that it could not possibly win, or are the people of Glasgow expected to pay for that themselves?