‘A budget based on pure delusion’ – South Tyneside MPs react to the borough being included in a £400m pot for ‘Levelling Up Partnerships’

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, announced during his Spring Budget speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday, March 15, that South Tyneside would be included in a £400m funding pot designated for “Levelling Up Partnerships”.

The Chancellor said: “I will make over £400m available for new Levelling Up Partnerships in areas that include Redcar and Cleveland, Blackburn, Oldham, Rochdale, Mansfield, South Tyneside, and Bassetlaw."

It means that the authorities in South Tyneside can bid for funding to create opportunities within the local community such as improving jobs, pay and living standards, making areas safer, protecting health and wellbeing, investing in town centres and improving local transport links.

Despite the funding announcement, Kate Osborne, the Member of Parliament for Jarrow, has stated that the Government has failed her constituents and branded Levelling Up as a “false rhetoric”.

She said: “This Government has failed my Jarrow constituents.

"People across the UK are struggling to afford food, rent, heating, and childcare. Mortgages are £2,000 a year higher than they were before the Government's mini budget last September.

“These costs have escalated during the cost of living crisis, but these issues have been ongoing since long before inflation reached its highest point in 40 years because of their failures to govern.

“In Jarrow, 40% of constituents are unable to afford to turn the heating on.

“This comes to no surprise when electricity prices in the UK have risen by 66.7% and gas prices by 129% in the 12 months to January 2023. The so-called price freeze does not help the many that are struggling to pay the already high costs.

“Small businesses were once again neglected and their false rhetoric on levelling up continues - it remains the case more still goes to London and the South East than the North will ever see.

“But I hope the promise for money for South Tyneside is actually delivered – we will see.”

Emma Lewell-Buck, MP for South Shields, has slammed the Chancellor for only including the borough in a “vague funding commitment” and for providing no help to small businesses.

She commented: “This was a budget based on pure delusion from the Tories.

"The Chancellor smugly boasted about avoiding a recession, yet our economy is still shrinking. We have the worst growth in the G7, typical incomes for people in the UK is down by 2% in the last ten years – whilst incomes in France grew by 34% and in Germany by 27%.

"In terms of South Tyneside, we’ve been mentioned just once in the 116-page budget red book and it’s once again a vague funding commitment based on a bidding process.

"We’ve seen how this works already in South Shields – two levelling-up bids, a freeport bid and towns fund bid all rejected.

"For our hospitality-led small businesses in Shields – there was no respite through VAT reduction and no further help with catastrophically high energy bills.

“In addition to this, their delusion spreads to inflation – just because inflation is dropping towards the end of the year, doesn’t mean that prices are falling; they are just rising less rapidly.”

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