The local government minister has responded to accusations of political bias in the government’s prioritisation of areas for recent funding pots as being “grounded in politics and politicisation”, and revealed some of the emerging thinking on what form the UK shared prosperity fund should take.
At a Lords public services committee session yesterday, Luke Hall vehemently denied the accusation of pork barrel politics that has been levelled at the government. He and chief secretary to the Treasury Steve Barclay were grilled over what Lord Filkin (Lab) called the government’s “pretty significant communication failure” on its levelling up strategy.