Coastal Communities: East Devon

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Joy Morrissey.)

I would like to talk about the east Devon coastline and some of the communities that are represented by two MPs—one for a constituency of the same name, and me, the MP for Tiverton and Honiton. The constituency I represent includes the coastal towns and villages of Seaton, Beer, Branscombe and Axmouth. My comments will relate mostly to those communities, although I cannot avoid referring to a town in the current East Devon constituency. I have notified the hon. Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) that I will refer to his constituency, given that some of the east Devon infrastructure that I will refer to affects people I represent. Last July and August, I carried out a summer tour of the villages and towns that I represent. As well as taking in some of the larger settlements such as Beer and Colyton, I visited coastal villages like Branscombe and Uplyme. I will mention some of the points that were made to me in the debate.

Before 2022, the Honiton constituency had not been represented by anyone other than a Conservative MP for over 150 years. Why do I raise that in a debate on Government support for communities on the east Devon coastline? I suggest that that Conservative rule of more than a century and a half helps to explain why there has been a tendency by the Conservatives to take east Devon for granted. The National Audit Office estimates that in the decade before 2022, the real spending power of English councils was reduced by 29%. That represented the removal of £10 billion of spending power. The levelling-up funding that replaced it represents less than half that amount.

If properly funded, local government can play a key role in helping our communities to thrive, yet the Government’s levelling-up fund is an inefficient way to support local initiatives, leading to lots of nugatory work from already stretched council officers. Most councils have reached the limits of what can be achieved from efficiency savings. Further cuts will have to come from core services that are valued by the communities that councils serve, such as non-statutory services like public toilets, leisure centres and bus routes. The approach undermines local decision making and local democracy. Decisions about what to fund are made by bureaucrats in Whitehall, who are remote from the people affected by their decisions. Rather than devolving power, as the Liberal Democrats would, this move has further concentrated power here in London.

I thank the hon. Member for allowing me to intervene. He makes a point about levelling-up funding; of course, we have had success with that in my East Devon constituency, which includes the town of Exmouth. What does he make of the fundamental fact that East Devon District Council had the opportunity to apply for money to support the swimming pools—in fact, I was asked to campaign for that money—but then was the only council in the county not to apply for any funding for our swimming pools, which includes an independent pool in his constituency in Axminster? Was it not a huge disappointment that the opportunity was there and was not grasped by our council? What a let down!

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me an opportunity to talk up the great work that goes on in our leisure facilities in east Devon. As he says, the Flamingo pool in Axminster is brilliant; I take my daughter swimming there, and the volunteers who work there are fantastic. Given that he not only knows the Flamingo pool but has LED Community Leisure facilities in his constituency, the hon. Gentleman will know that we must do everything we can to help local authorities to apply for any funding that is available.

I commend the hon. Gentleman for initiating the debate. Does he recognise the good work that levelling-up funding has done, and the fact that so many people and many councils can take advantage of it? Does he also endorse the view that whatever party may be in government in the future, it should be an integral part of the funding structure of every council in the United Kingdom?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. Of 500 bids for levelling-up funding, only 111 were successful, and I am mindful of the 389 that involved so much work on the part of council officers. The Minister may correct me if I have got the number slightly wrong, but that is my understanding. We should remember that councils are not well staffed; in fact, they have many vacancies, because they are constantly having to cut staff numbers.

When the Conservatives talked of levelling up in their 2019 manifesto, they were talking to communities that were crying out for just that, but many of the east Devon coastal communities that I represent have been disappointed. Let me draw an analogy with a cream tea. In Devon, if someone talks about adding toppings to a scone, we immediately think “cream first”, and when someone talks about levelling up, we immediately think “investment in our communities”. Little did we know that in both cases, what the Conservatives actually meant was “jam tomorrow”.

The Government’s approach of encouraging councils to use reserves and capital receipts to subsidise their revenue expenditure is unsustainable. Let us take, for example, the recent use by Devon County Council of £7.8 million of clawback money, which it had received from BT in connection with the provision of broadband internet. Rather than using that money as intended—to extend the provision of broadband to rural areas—the council used it to close its deficit. That got it through the 2023-24 financial year, but what will happen next March when there is no payout from BT, and what will happen to the thousands of my constituents who struggle to access the internet, which in the 21st century is an essential utility?

In the first round of levelling-up funding, the south-west region was ranked ninth out of 12 regions of the UK for the amount of funding received. It amounted to just £23 per person, which is less than the price of a single railway ticket from Honiton to Plymouth. We might as well buy a round of ice creams with the money, given how far levelling-up funding for east Devon will not stretch. The west country received less than 8% of all levelling-up funding from round 1. Even London received more than half that proportion, despite the fact that it was London’s levels of wealth and infrastructure to which other regions of the UK were supposed to be levelled up.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) for bringing forward this important Adjournment debate about his area.

It might be helpful if I set the scene with a few facts and figures. I understand entirely the difficulty, the tensions and the problems for coastal and rural councils in delivering services. There is an additionality to cost that is often triggered by a heightening of the age demographic, as the hon. Gentleman said, and by the sparsity of communities. These are not great dense conurbations but small, picturesque villages and hamlets. They are attractive and they support our environment and make an area a lovely place in which to live, but it is not without challenge to deliver public services there. That is being experienced by a lot of councils in those areas.

That is why we listened carefully and closely to those who made representations to us during the evolution of the local government funding settlement. Pausing for a moment, I have made the point before to the hon. Gentleman that a record number of Members of Parliament from across the House came to see officials and me during the official consultation process, to advocate in the strongest possible terms on behalf of their areas. My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) was one of them, but the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton was not. I politely say to him that if one is serious about trying to effect change, an Adjournment debate is an interesting platform on which to do it, but engagement in the proper channels of communication and consultation can often bring forward better results.

Let me run through a list of some successes in our part of Devon. They include: £15.7 million to help level up Exmouth, including the Dinan Way extension, which the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton mentioned; up to £30 million from South West Water to improve water infrastructure in Sidmouth; £1.4 million to address flooding on the River Sid and River Otter; a new school to replace Tipton St John Primary; our incredible Nightingale Hospital, which is still open and still bringing down waiting lists in my constituency; and, up the line in mid-Devon, which the hon. Gentleman sometimes pretends he represents, Cullompton is getting a new railway station. Meanwhile, Lib Dem-led East Devon District Council failed even to apply for funding for swimming pools, even though it asked me to campaign for it. It is the Lib Dems who are failing the south-west, not the Conservatives.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Maybe the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton is the sort of bloke who complains that he did not win the lottery even though he did not buy a ticket. How could he be expected to win the lottery? You have to be in it to win it.

Of course, not every council bid is going to be successful, but as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, the dynamic effect of levelling up across the United Kingdom is being felt across communities, many of which had felt left behind, ignored, undervalued—call it what you will—by successive Governments of all stripes. If one talks to those in communities that are benefiting directly from the levelling-up initiative, the shared prosperity fund, the future high streets fund and others, there is a real sense of excitement about what can be done in partnership with the local authority, local businesses and the Government to deliver beneficial change.

Although I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon for setting out with such clarity the projects that have been delivered or part-funded, I am slightly annoyed, because he has stolen quite a lot of my remarks. He was a very distinguished local journalist, whose calls I used to relish taking—anything to get my views and thoughts on some local issue on the record. I now quiver slightly when my telephone rings and I see his name flashing, because I know he will ask for further things for his part of Devon and the wider county. He advocates at the heart of Government to ensure that his constituents and others, including those of Tiverton and Honiton, see the benefit of the UK Government’s commitment to levelling up.

We listened to local government and offered an additional £600 million in the local government finance settlement; I know that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton is aware of that. East Devon District Council saw an increase in core spending power of 5.9%, making available a total of £17.4 million for 2024-25. Mid Devon District Council saw an increase of 5.9%, making available a total of £11.6 million, and the county got an increase in core spending power of 7.8%, which is an additional £56.8 million, making available a total of up to £788.8 million for Devon County Council in 2024-25. We have invested £15 billion in a suite of complementary levelling-up projects to help grow the economy, create jobs, improve transport, provide skills training and support local businesses. Perhaps more powerful than even those things, as powerful and efficacious as they are, is the civic pride that the investment lights up in areas such as his—a pride in seeing what can be done, and starting a process that, if successful and guided and managed well, can provide no end of opportunities.

Given the sorts of enterprises that the Minister just described levelling-up funding as being about, can he explain the decision to invest £50,000 in stone chess tables in north-west England?

There is a rubric for taking decisions. The Department’s levelling-up initiative is, of course, handled by the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my excellent hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young). Each scheme is judged against fixed criteria; if it meets those criteria, it goes into the next round and can ultimately be successful.

I am afraid that I am not in a position to comment on individual schemes, whether successful or not, or on why they have been successful or not. That is something that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton would need to take up with the Under-Secretary, who always makes himself available to colleagues from across the House to discuss the exciting levelling-up initiative.

By my figures, £94.5 million of levelling-up funding has been allocated to Devon, excluding through legacy programmes, and that is in addition to significant long-term devolved funding and powers that we estimate to be worth up to £27 million, so I dispute as a matter of core principle the idea that the hon. Gentleman was trying to posit in my mind, and the mind of the House, that this Government and my party take for granted his part of Devon, or that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon—or indeed any other seat where we have a long history of representation. The Conservative party is a one nation party or it is nothing. We represent the views and aspirations of millions of people. It is why we have been the most successful political party, trying to do our best where we can for all our communities.

The hon. Gentleman was right to say that the terms of reference for levelling up have evolved since it was instigated. It was initially seen as primarily the preserve of post-industrial northern towns, but increasingly we see its power in our rural and coastal communities too. I have set out the figures on Devon’s success with levelling-up proposals; the county is doing incredibly well. Some £16 million in round-two levelling-up funding has been allocated for Destination Exmouth, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon mentioned. East Devon District Council received £1.8 million from the United Kingdom shared prosperity fund. East Devon will also benefit from the fact that the Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership was the recipient of £35.4 million from the Getting Building Fund programme for 2020 to 2022. The community ownership fund has been very powerful in areas such as the hon. Gentleman’s, as it has in mine. It supports initiatives that are of value, including sport centres, arts venues and precious community spaces.