Britain’s Industrial Future

Alex Davies-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is an honour to speak in this debate today, and I would like to focus my remarks on the link between Britain’s industrial future and its industrial past. This link is critical to the work of the all-party parliamentary group on coalfield communities, which I proudly chair. As the proud daughter of a former coalminer, I strongly believe that any talk on Britain’s future industrial vision must include a strategy for the regeneration of our former coalfields. My constituency of Pontypridd and Taff Ely is a brilliant patchwork of former coalmining communities that are proud of the contribution their heritage has made to Britain’s past industrial success. As I said in my maiden speech, just as those coalmines brought previously unreachable levels of prosperity to my area in the last industrial revolution, a new era of green industry in Britain can unlock new heights of prosperity and growth. I strongly believe that south Wales, and Pontypridd and Taff Ely, can be at the forefront of this regeneration.

To secure Britain’s industrial future, we must kick-start a new green industrial revolution, which would bring three extraordinary benefits: regeneration and prosperity on a regional level; economic growth on a national scale; and facing up to the challenges of the climate crisis on a global scale. At the heart of that first point, regeneration, is that much-discussed idea of levelling up, which has been criticised for potentially meaning many things and, by this Government’s record, also meaning absolutely nothing.

We have now had years of successive Tory Governments promising regeneration and completely failing to deliver concrete plans, culminating in February’s astonishingly vacuous levelling-up White Paper. Colleagues will recall that, rather than outline serious policy proposals for regenerating left-behind regions, the White Paper was padded out with a history of renaissance Europe and an enormous list of the world’s largest cities since 7,000 BC.

With funding prospects such as the long-awaited shared prosperity fund for left-behind regions still in doubt, and with the Tory Government asleep at the wheel on how to use that funding, the Opposition have an opportunity to take hold of the levelling-up agenda. Crucial to that agenda is securing an industrial strategy for Britain that is fit for the 21st century because, let us be clear, the Government’s current poor industrial strategy has been a complete failure: 12 years of stagnant economic performance; 12 years of no growth in real wages; and 12 years of deepening inequality in living standards. It is devastating evidence of the UK Government’s fiscal incompetence that Britain currently has more geographical inequality than almost any other rich country, and that was before the cost of living crisis properly took hold.

There are few places where this is more apparent than the south Wales valleys, which are the most deprived economic regions in Wales. We might not have our fair share of wealth, and we might be economically deprived, but we are rich in community, in skills and in opportunities. It is a clear legacy of the failed industrial strategy that our regions, which once helped power our industrialisation, have been left behind. Whether it is our former mining towns such as Pontypridd or the communities across the UK that powered our steelmaking, shipbuilding and automotive industries, the story is the same.

To facilitate a national strategy, the UK Government should be working in lockstep with organisations that are already investing in small and medium-sized enterprises in former industrial communities. The Coalfields Regeneration Trust, to name but one example, is building industrial starter units for SMEs and reinvests the rental income from those units in skills and wellbeing programmes for former coalfield communities. This innovative approach can form part of a joined-up industrial strategy that provides enormous levelling-up potential through reinvestment.

We have seen encouraging glimpses of the economic potential of a flourishing industrial future for Wales, and the work of the fantastic Welsh Labour Government to cultivate that potential must be commended. In Nantgarw in my constituency, where Craig Yr Allt colliery was once the deepest coal pit in south Wales, I am proud that General Electric Aviation has established a facility that provides well over 1,000 jobs in high-tech advanced manufacturing in our local area.

Despite the work of the Welsh Government, with the limited resources they have available, we will continue to miss out without an overall industrial strategy from the UK Government that is genuinely committed to meaningful growth. It is clear that, after 12 years of Tory rule, the Government are not interested in regeneration, but through Labour’s industrial Strategy, which has regeneration at the heart of its vision, left-behind regions can tap into the prosperity that the next technological revolution brings, delivering higher living standards and higher wages. I will continue to do everything in my power to make this happen, and I will continue to bang the drum for our former coalfield communities to make sure they are no longer left behind but are leading from the front.