Chamber and committees

Thank you very much. I will open up the questioning to colleagues. The first to ask questions will be Liz Smith.

Given that no one else has mentioned the multiply programme so far, I thought that I would touch on it.

Secretary of state, you have talked a lot about partnership working, but South Ayrshire Council, a Conservative-led authority, has said:

“the allocation for Multiply which accounted for over 17% of ... UK”

shared prosperity fund

“resources, was ring fenced ... it is doubtful whether South Ayrshire Council would have determined such allocation if it had been given discretion on this matter. The programme could have been more effective by aligning and combining both numeracy and literacy interventions. The Multiply financial allocations follow an even pattern. It will be challenging to spend”

even

“one third of our Multiply allocation”.

Surely, if there has been partnership working and not imposition, as you have said, that situation with a Conservative authority would not be happening.

It is becoming more important, but it seems odd that the UK Government should even be involved in the multiply initiative, given that education is completely devolved. If we are honest, it has not been brought in through partnership working. The UK Government has decided that it is going to impose it on Scotland, and that is it. I cannot think for a single minute that the Scottish ministers said, “Oh, that’s a great idea.” They would have been happy if you had allocated additional funding through the block grant that they could spend on education, but to come in and impose something on which even Conservative authorities do not believe they can fully utilise the allocated resources is clearly a concern.

I am quite sure that they would be willing to work cross-border.

We have to finish at noon, so we have only a couple of minutes left, but I will say one final thing before I wind up. Zoe Billingham, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank, said that the National Audit Office report on levelling up includes

“a litany of missed deadlines, moving goalposts and dysfunction in the way levelling up funds have been allocated to councils as part of the government’s flagship programme.”

In Scotland, we have also had the imposition of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, which means that it cuts across devolved policy. To give you the final word, secretary of state, what will you do differently to ensure that levelling up is much more impactful and effective for those it is trying to assist?

Good morning and welcome to the third meeting in 2024 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

We have one item on today’s agenda, which is to take evidence on the replacement of European Union structural funds in Scotland from the Rt Hon. Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, in the United Kingdom Government. Mr Gove joins us online. A very good morning to you and welcome to the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

We have almost 90 minutes for the evidence session. Before I open up the discussion to members, I understand that Mr Gove would like to make a short opening statement.

Has that happened? Do you have any examples of where that has happened in Scotland?

Yes; something like 21 of 32 Scottish local authorities have received awards through the three rounds.

The Western Isles is one of the most deprived areas of Scotland and the most rural. It is suffering depopulation and has not received any funding. That is an issue.

I will quote what the National Audit Office says:

“The three funds”—

the UK prosperity fund, the levelling up fund and the towns fund—

“have overlapping objectives but were designed and announced at different times, such that local authorities could not align their plans”.

The NAO seems to indicate that UK Government departments were perhaps not speaking to each other in the way that they should have been so that you could get a more complete and rounded picture and resources could be allocated much more effectively and efficiently. Is there some truth in that?

Thank you very much for your time, secretary of state—it is appreciated by members of the committee. We hope that you will come back to the committee in the near future. We had hoped to see you in October 2022, and it has been a long time since then. It would be wonderful to see you in person, and we could go into some of these subjects in greater depth. The Scottish Parliament has an important role to play in relation to scrutiny and transparency of the funding, and the committee looks forward to continuing its work with you.

Thank you. I call this meeting to a close.