NO CASH has been handed out in Hampshire from a flagship £450m business funding pot, the Government has admitted.

Southampton Itchen MP John Denham will today highlight the “failure” of the Regional Growth Fund to get money to businesses in his keynote speech to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.

The Shadow Business Secretary will seize on the admission by the Department for Business that just one of 45 schemes, in the West Country, had passed legal and financial tests.

However, when Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced the successful bids, in April, he pledged they would be up and running “in the coming months2, saying: “It is all about jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Mr Denham will also criticise the government’s decision to axe England’s Regional Growth Funds and replace them with business-led Local Enterprise Partnerships, which have a smaller budget.

Last night he told the Daily Echo: “Not only have they slashed the money, they have failed to get it to the causes that need it.”