Who’d have thought Nick Clegg would write for the Daily Mail? Well, actually, not THAT one, but the Hull Daily Mail about the Government’s £104 million investment in local infrastructure which will be spent on transport links, housing and flood defences. It’s a Liberal Democrat initiative to have local councils and communities decide where money is best spent – good old fashioned liberal decentralisation.
He talked about how he has put his vision into practice:
I wanted to see every part of Britain given more freedom than at the start of this parliament, so the people who know most about Hull will have the money and the support to deliver changes that can benefit everyone.
I’m delighted today my vision is truly becoming a reality.
Thanks to the Liberal Democrats in Government, we’re placing the power and money in the hands of the people who know how to spend it best. It will help end our over-reliance on the banks and the city of London, and generate growth, jobs, and ambition in towns and cities all across England.
What does the investment mean in practical terms for Hull?
Over the lifetime of today’s deal we’ll be investing a total of about £103.7m in Humberside to help safeguard or create up to 9,000 jobs, allow up to 5,000 homes to be built or refurbished, support major work on flood defences to reduce the risk to over 62,000 properties and generate up to £260m in public and private investment.
This should also go some way to helping Humberside become a national and international centre for renewable energy by creating a new training facility for specialist offshore wind training and a learning centre for environmental technology skills.
You can read the whole article here.
Hull City Hall photo by John Lord
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5 Comments
Clegg was on Look North yesterday saying that Yorkshire will be getting £150 million. If this article is correct that means that the other three Yorkshire counties will have to share roughly £50 million. This is not right.
Humberside? It hasn’t existed for 20 years!
I’m sure the investment is welcome, but it seems small compared to others’ investments in the area,
http://www.hull.co.uk/case.asp?pageid=222
Hull is one of the few cities where Liberal Democrat support is holding up rather well.
Spending more on infrastructure investment is a good thing. But don’t imagine that this announcement is very devolutionary.
As I understand it, the allocations are all made by central government on the basis of bids made by different areas for particular projects – ie it’s a competition and the central government decided which projects to support. Many of them are projects which were put forward by government departments and agencies in the areas concerned, as “good things to bid for”.
Proper devolution of spending would allocate sums to areas and then let the local authorities decide how to spend them. (This is what used to happen).
Proper fiscal devolution would be if local authorities could raise their own funds and decide howe to spend them, independently of central government.
As for the allocations themselves, they are better than nothing and almost certainly a lot better than the Tories would have done on their own. But it’s just restoring some of the cuts in such spending that the Coalition made when they took over. So don’t get too carried away.
Tony Greaves