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Regeneration

I hope that the Minister did not misunderstand the Committee's comments. No one was denying the benefits of the schemes in the Government's report, but he says that because a scheme such as HS2 will benefit areas that require regeneration, along with the rest of the country in terms of economic growth, it should therefore be counted as regeneration funding. That is in absence of a strategy for how that stream of funding will connect with other funding and benefit the poorest areas where market failure has occurred. That is the problem with the Government's approach.