A row over levelling up funding has broken out between leading Stockport councillors and a furious MP who claims ‘outright lies’ were told about him at a full council meeting. Labour MP Andrew Gwynne is demanding a correction of the record and an apology after senior Lib Dem councillors said he had backed a Levelling up bid for Denton - in the Tameside half of his constituency - over one for Reddish, in Stockport.
Mr Gwynne - whose Denton and Reddish constituency straddles the two boroughs - says he had always intended to back a second bid for the Reddish Baths project but was unable to as the council had not prepared a proposal in time. However, the Lib Dems are refusing to back down, insisting that there was nothing ‘factually incorrect’ in what was said in the council chamber, at the March 30 meeting.
And they believe that Mr Gwynne’s anger would be better directed at the government, whose rules stipulate that an MP can only back one bid in his constituency. But Mr Gwynne - who has lodged a formal complaint with the authority - says that ‘for Liberal Democrat Councillors to be using their platform in their chamber to spread outright lies is totally unacceptable’.
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“I supported the Reddish Round 1 Levelling Up Fund, which was rejected by the Tory government,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service. “The Liberal Democratic council then didn’t have a project for Round 2 of the fund, so I naturally supported Tameside Council’s last-minute proposal so something from the Denton and Reddish constituency could be submitted within the government's deadline.”
"Had the Liberal Democrats managed to put a bid together for Reddish, then I of course would have supported that. To blame me for their lack of bid preparation is just not on.”
His anger has been sparked first by a remark from Coun Grace Baynham - cabinet member for highways parks and leisure - who told the meeting that ‘the MP for Denton and Reddish decided that the bid was to be placed in Denton’.
And that was later followed by Coun Colin MacAlister, cabinet member for economy and regeneration - who said ‘unfortunately the MP wanted to put his signature on a bid in Tameside. He also went further than Coun Baynham, suggesting that he may have been influenced by an upcoming shake up of constituency boundaries.
“That could be because his boundaries are moving to Tameside,” he added.
The stand-off appears to boil down to a disagreement over the timeline that led to Mr Gwynne backing the Reddish bid. The LDRS has seen a series of emails between Mr Gwynne and Caroline Simpson, the council’s chief executive.
Ms Simpson says the council shelved its Reddish Baths bid after becoming aware of a Tameside council report that said Mr Gwynne was backing their Denton bid. Mr Gwynne says he had already made it clear to Tameside that Reddish was his priority should a bid arise - referring to a screenshot from a Tameside council director acknowledging this to be the case.
However, he adds that is ‘academic’ as Stockport didn’t have a bid to be submitted for Reddish within the then anticipated project timescales. Ms Simpson also disagrees that the Stockport councillors’ comments suggest Mr Gwynne had ‘flipped’ his support to Denton.
In his final email, the Labour MP confirms he wishes to make a formal complaint and for the matter to be brought before the authority’s standards committee.
He told the LDRS: “It is one thing to get facts wrong, another to double down and perpetuate something you know to be incorrect. I have reported this case to the monitoring officer, as local people rightly expect their representatives to meet the high standards required in public life.”
However, Coun Baynham and Coun MacAlister are adamant they have nothing to apologise for and that their remarks in the council chamber were factually correct.
Coun MacAlister insists he ‘only stated the truth’. “The truth is a constituency MP can only support one bid,” he said.
“He supported the bid in Denton - which is fair enough - I understand that, so he can’t support the bid for Reddish. What is factually incorrect with that statement?”
“The rules are each constituency has the chance to support one bid. The chief executive has already explained that to him, he is just not happy with what the chief executive has said. I didn’t mislead anybody. I stated the facts.”
Coun MacAlister added that Mr Gwynne’s anger would be better directed at the government rules, rather than himself. “An MP can only support one bid - there’s one per constituency,” he said. “At the end of the day, I don’t make the rules on Levelling Up, the government makes the rules on Levelling Up.”
Coun Baynham has also defended her remarks at the full council meeting.
She said: “The council would have been happy to put forward a similar bid in round two, but the preference from the MP there was to put forward a bid in Denton. We recognise this is a difficult decision for MPs and we were merely pointing out that the bid for the Marple scheme [in the Hazel Grove constituency] could not have been transferred to Reddish, as some people had suggested.
“We are happy that the Marple bid was successful and look forward to seeing it progress over the next few months. As a council, we will continue to look for ways of enhancing the provision of services in Reddish.”
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