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78376

registered interest
date	16/07/2014
answering body	Department for Communities and Local Government
answering dept id	7
answering dept short name	Communities and Local Government
answering dept sort name	Communities and Local Government
hansard heading	EU Grants and Loans
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with reference to the Answer of 3 December 2013, Official Report, column 630W, on EU grants and loans, how much and what proportion of 2007 to 2013 European Regional Development Fund monies allocated to the UK with match-funding in place have been (a) contractually committed and (b) drawn down in (i) each English region and (ii) in total to date.
tabling member constituency	Streatham
tabling member printed	Mr Chuka Umunna
uin	206317
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 26/11/2014 answer text <p>The information requested is provided in the attached table (1). The “contractually committed” figures are up to 30 September 2014. All contractually committed funding has had match funding identified, so no separate figures are shown for this.</p><p>Across the programme, an average of 100% of the programme is now contractually committed. All spending of taxpayers’ money must ensure value for money; and money should not be spent on poor quality projects just for the sake of it. Spending must also comply with complex and bureaucratic EU rules, or else risk “financial corrections” down the line.</p><p>Where the contractually committed figure is slightly less than the total allocation, this reflects the restrictive, bureaucratic rules associated with the whole programme, and the lack of flexibility in the rules.</p><p>To place this in context, I attach with this answer a table (2) showing the allocations in the 2000-06 programme under the last Labour Government: only 93% of the allocation was ever committed, leaving £392 million of uncommitted resources; of which £48 million was uncommitted in the West Midlands Objective 2 area, £64 million uncommitted in the North West Objective 2 area, and £38 million uncommitted in the Yorkshire and the Humber Objective 2 area.</p><p>In this context, despite the complexities, the 2007-13 programme has been far better administered under this Government than the 2000-06 programme under the last Administration.</p><p>The European Regional Development Fund is a circular programme. UK taxpayers’ money is given to the European Union budget. Under the Fund, a local project receives a contract, spends money and then claims from DCLG. DCLG then claims funds back from the European Commission. The whole process goes through a complex auditing process involving DCLG auditors and then European Union auditors. After a period of time, the majority of unspent funding is returned to the UK Government by the European Commission. We continue to have concerns over the bureaucratic and time consuming nature of the processes involved in the programme, as a consequence of rules imposed by the European Commission.</p><p> </p> answering member constituency Portsmouth North answering member printed Penny Mordaunt attachment 1 file name 206317 Umunna - Table 1.docx title Table 1 2 file name 206317 Umunna - Table 2.pdf title Table 2 question first answered 26/11/2014 16:11:42 answering member 4017 label Biography information for Penny Mordaunt
tabling member	4128 label Biography information for Chuka Umunna

78388

registered interest
date	16/07/2014
answering body	Department for Communities and Local Government
answering dept id	7
answering dept short name	Communities and Local Government
answering dept sort name	Communities and Local Government
hansard heading	Fire Services: Pensions
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential liability to Government should the take-up rate in the proposed 2015 firefighters' pension scheme be lower than anticipated.
tabling member constituency	West Ham
tabling member printed	Lyn Brown
uin	206187
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 21/08/2014 answer text <p> </p><p>The Government is committed to providing good quality public service pension schemes and encouraging saving for retirement. Firefighters will continue to get one of the most generous public service pensions available – over £19,000 at age 60 after a full career (based on a firefighters’ salary of £29,000). Many firefighters who transfer to the firefighters’ pension scheme 2015 will see a reduction in their employee contribution rate of around 2 percentage points in 2015-16.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>If a firefighter opts out of the pension scheme, this reduces the long term liability for the taxpayer but increases the short term top-up grant paid by the Department to fund the shortfall in scheme income. Overall, this would be likely to result in a long-term net saving for taxpayers, but we have not undertaken the actuarial work to calculate a precise assessment. This is because we would encourage firefighters to remain in the scheme, given it remains an extremely good defined benefit scheme – an equivalent private pension pot would need over half a million pounds of funding and require firefighters to contribute twice as much.</p><p> </p> answering member constituency Portsmouth North answering member printed Penny Mordaunt question first answered 21/08/2014 12:08:26 answering member 4017 label Biography information for Penny Mordaunt
tabling member	1583 label Biography information for Ms Lyn Brown