City of Bradford Metropolitan District

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to contribute to this afternoon’s debate. I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, a Bradford upbringing, and I am grateful for her informative and balanced outline of the challenges facing the district today. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, on a fascinating and uplifting maiden speech.

As others have said, in recent decades Bradford has been badly hit by economic deprivation and social unrest. However, I feel strongly that there is cause for optimism today when we talk about Bradford. That optimism is there when I talk to people in the town and, perhaps surprisingly, it is often there in the local press. Among the car crashes and court cases covered by the Bradford Telegraph & Argus, space is also given to regeneration and community projects, to construction starting this month on the long-delayed Westfield shopping centre and to the encouraging early outcomes from the Get Bradford Working initiative. Even the national media sometimes take note. I was struck by a story that I read before Christmas, which has also been mentioned by the noble Baroness and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, about the town’s last remaining synagogue, a grade II listed building that a year ago was leaking badly and in danger of being sold off, which would have forced the small congregation to travel the 10 miles to Leeds to worship. Yet, one year on, the Bradford reform synagogue’s future is looking more secure because of the intervention of Bradford’s Muslim community. Some of its most influential members helped the synagogue’s chairman to mount a successful lottery bid, and that money will now help renovate the building. Thanks to the relationships formed through their fundraising effort, the communities now do other things together. Once renovated, the synagogue plans to open for school visits throughout the week.

I, too, believe passionately that education has a key role to play in helping to address the challenges of integration faced by the district’s different communities. I want to focus my remaining time on the tremendous educational opportunities in Bradford, not least the role the university is playing in raising aspirations locally. The university’s three-year partnership with University Academy Keighley has seen a significant increase in the percentage of students gaining five A* to C grade qualifications, including in English and maths.

Last year, Bradford University opened a £1.6 million centre to raise attainment in the key science, technology, engineering and maths subjects for schoolchildren, not only in the district but beyond—one of the few STEM-specific facilities in the country. In December it launched a Centre of Excellence for Environmental Technologies in collaboration with Bradford Council and Buttershaw Business & Enterprise College, as part of the Get Bradford Working programme. It is supported by many local businesses, including Yorkshire Water. They all want to build a highly skilled young workforce which will attract more companies and investment into the area.

The university is one of the largest employers in the area. It plays a lead role in the Yorkshire Innovation Fund, in which local universities help small to medium-sized enterprises to develop new and improved products and services through R&D and innovation. One example is the university’s groundbreaking Centre for Pharmaceutical Engineering Science, which is helping to improve the competitiveness of South Yorkshire SMEs through the use of green processing technologies.

I also want to mention Bradford College, the fourth-largest college in the country and the largest provider of HE outside the university sector in England, which plays its part in transforming lives, communities and the economy. The college’s new multimillion pound campus, being built in the heart of Bradford, is due to be completed this autumn and will add to the regeneration of the city.

I take heart from the assiduous work of the university in raising aspirations and attainment and aiding the prosperity of Bradford, and from the story of the synagogue and the mosque communities supporting each other. In 2014, Bradford is showing that it is a place where people of different faiths and backgrounds can come together, to learn, to work and to do business, for the benefit of all the people of the district.