The EU supports poorer regions. Will the Tories abandon them after Brexit? | Molly Scott Cato | Opinion
In delivering the refrain: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,†Joni Mitchell provides us with an unlikely Brexit anthem. From the freedom to travel and work to the knowledge that you can eat safe food or use your phone abroad without paying roaming charges, we’re beginning to notice how much of what we have come to expect as citizens of a civilised society is provided or supported by the EU. As we struggle our way through the increasingly chaotic process of Brexit, we are left asking ourselves just what will survive our leaving.
Today, it is funding for the regeneration of our regions that is the focus of attention, with Kevin Bentley of the Local Government Association calling on the government to guarantee that it will match the £8.4bn local authorities received during the present EU funding round. It’s a call to protect the vulnerable people they represent and echoes the same plea they made this time last year, straight after the referendum. Rather than reassurance, the country’s poorer regions face continuing uncertainty.
Can we really expect governments that have allowed the UK to become increasingly unequal and more unbalanced towards its capital than almost any other country in Europe to continue to employ the EU’s principle of regional redistribution? Our contributions to the EU budget are returned to a number of groups and areas that might have otherwise found it incredibly difficult to make a case for funding to a government that has ensured the poorest areas of the country have paid the highest price for austerity â€" and that has cut funding to local authorities in England by 27% in recent years.
In my European parliamentary constituency of the south-west, the local area most clearly at risk is Cornwall; it has benefited from the highest level of EU funding (which was reserved for post-industrial areas) over several decades. Arguments made by increasingly desperate Cornwall council representatives during the referendum fell on closed ears. Cornwall voted leave by 56.5% to 43.5%. The local chat focused on allegations of corruption and an idea that money was ending up with the wrong people. No evidence was brought forward in support of this argument, but the distant spectre of Brussels was definitely to blame, the argument went. Discussion of the EU funding that has enabled Cornwall to become a world leader in renewable technologies was absent from these conversations.
The south-west currently receives around £729.3m of public investment of EU money every year. Since the abolition of regional development associations in 2012, much of the innovative regeneration and business support across the region has been funded from Brussels, rather than Westminster. Take, for instance, the National Composites Centre, based at the Bristol and Bath science park, which was developed with European regional development funding of £9m to put the UK at the forefront of composites technology. The centre is a purpose-built research and development facility that brings together companies and academics to develop technologies supporting the design and rapid manufacture of composites â€" lightweight, high-performance materials that are transforming the design and manufacture of components used in the aerospace and automotive industries, and marine and renewable technologies.
Another recipient is the Poole-based charity the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which received funding to develop a system for decommissioning lifeboats and reducing the carbon footprint of the organisation. And there is the north Dorset-based company that was awarded funds under the Life programme (supporting environmental and nature conservation projects) to develop an environment-friendly repair system for leaking sewage and rainwater/surface drainage pipes, while Dorset county council received funding for a collaborative project focused on coastal zone management and the development of a strategy for an open coast. And so we could go on, lauding the achievements of the sort of projects funded by the EU that are now at risk.
Cornwall has six MPs, all of them Tories and all but one of them a Brexiteer. Boris Johnson famously launched his Vote Leave battle bus from Cornwall, brandishing pasties and promises. We must now hope that the local councillors hoping to catch the ear of Tory ministers in Westminster won’t be told to go whistle. It’s a long way back to Cornwall, even in the back of a big yellow taxi.
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