Levelling up under fire as Street criticises ‘begging bowl culture’

It is time to end the “begging bowl” approach to levelling up, West Midlands mayor Andy Street has said. The most senior Tory outside London criticised the prime minister’s approach to levelling up yesterday, while a string of backbench MPs vented their frustration at missing out on a share of the £2.1bn fund. Street said the process of allowing Whitehall to allocate £2bn to more than 100 projects around the country was “flawed”. He echoed criticisms from Labour, which had said forcing local areas to bid against each other was like something out of The Hunger Games. “This episode is another example as to why Whitehall’s bidding and begging bowl culture is broken,” he said. “The centralised system for London civil servants making local decisions is flawed. I cannot understand why the levelling up funding money was not devolved for local decision makers to decide on what’s best for their areas.” Labour shadow levelling-up minister Lisa Nandy said the fund was “in chaos, beset by delays and allegations of favouritism”. In private, Tory MPs fumed at a “ridiculous” process. One said: “I’ve got shops without roofs and streets of boarded-up houses and some people are getting cash for adventure golf.” Another referenced a video that surfaced in the summer of Rishi Sunak promising to send more of the cash to the south of England. “Rishi stood in Tunbridge Wells and told them it was important we got funding to people like them. Well, job done.” A total of 529 bids were received this time, with a total value of £8.8bn. That means that four out of five bids were unsuccessful. Lucy Frazer, the communities minister, said the government was keen to help areas that had failed on this occasion to do better next time. The prime minister rejected criticism that the affluent south of England had received more money than poorer Northern areas, pointing out that per capita the North had been given more. An analysis by The Guardian claims that Conservative-controlled areas received £20 per head more than opposition-held areas. Oliver Coppard, the Labour mayor of the Sheffield city region, said he was “angry and frustrated” after its bid for nearly £30m for transport was rejected. He added: “If you look at where the money has gone, it’s certainly not gone to places like South Yorkshire which should be the focus of their levelling up agenda. It feels to me like a pre-election bribe. You can’t level up a country by constant, endless competitions for small pots of money.” A £14m bid for an urban regeneration scheme in the former mining town in Bolsover, Derbyshire, was given short shrift by ministers, but £14m was found to help connect commuters in Sutton, south London. Sutton, a suburb at the edge of the North Downs made up of interwar semis and high streets with hanging baskets, has the lowest level of income deprivation across all of London’s boroughs, according to the anti-poverty charity Trust for London. Its MP, Paul Scully, was minister for London under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Bolsover elected a Conservative MP for the first time in 2019, with many saying they were swayed by promises of levelling up. The Times (£) and The Times (£) The FT (£) The Guardian