LONDON 4 Mar (ANA) - A £ 1.6bn fund is being launched by the government to boost less well-off towns after Brexit over the next six years.

 

The pot will be broken down into £ 1bn, given out using a needs-based formula, and £ 600m communities can bid for.

 

More than half of the money will go to the north of England and the Midlands.

 

But Labour called it a bribe to influence MPs in Leave-supporting areas to back the PM's Brexit deal and critics say it does not cover cuts to local authority funding.

 

In January, MPs rejected the withdrawal deal Theresa May has reached with the EU by 230 votes - the biggest defeat for a sitting government in history.

 

To win another vote, which Mrs May has promised will be on or before 12 March, she could find herself relying on the votes of Labour MPs from Leave-voting parts of the country.

 

John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, a former coal mining area in Nottinghamshire, told the PM last month to "show us the money" with "transformative investment" in areas that voted to leave.

 

The Labour MP, who backed Mrs May's Brexit deal at the first vote, denied it amounted to "transactional politics".

 

But John McDonnell, Labour's shadow chancellor, said the fund "smacks of desperation from a government reduced to bribing MPs to vote for their damaging flagship Brexit legislation".

 

Dismissing that claim, Housing and Communities Secretary James Brokenshire insisted the funding would be made available even if the withdrawal agreement was rejected and denied the funding was a bribe.

 

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This funding is there regardless of the outcome, but obviously we want to see a deal happening, we believe that is what is in the best interests of our country."

 

His said the funding is there "to see that towns grow" and is "following through on what the prime minister has really believed in, that sense of leaving no part of our UK behind".

 

However, Labour MP Alex Sobel, of the cross-party People's Vote campaign, which wants a new referendum on Brexit, said it was "a drop in the ocean" compared with the cost of leaving the EU.(ANA)

FA/ANA/4 March 2019-------