Karen Buck, Labour MP for Regent's Park and Kensington North, has been dragged into a row over the CLG's allocation of regeneration cash to Conservative Westminster Council (seepage 9). It's a difficult one for Ms Buck. On the one hand, her constituency needs that cash to improve local employment rates and to tackle child poverty (and yes, before you ask, poverty does exist in Regent's Park). She could, therefore, ask the CLG to pay for what it (initially) promised. On the other hand, Ms Buck has a reputation as a party loyalist and, as local government minister John Healey has pointed out, the ￡7m payment was miscalculated by Whitehall bean counters and should never have been promised to Westminster in the first place.
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