Midlands Engine

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Chris White]

I get the hon. Gentleman’s point. I am sure the Minister is listening to see how we can rebalance our regions to make sure essential investment will be forthcoming.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend believe that the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) should include in his figures all the investment that is going into HS2 in the midlands, particularly in Birmingham?

[Chris White]

I was coming on to HS2, which I have religiously voted against at every single opportunity. However, even I am beginning to see that it may become a reality. If it does, we must make sure that we take the benefits that HS2 brings, whatever they may be.

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[Chris White]

I worked for MG Rover and I know Plastic Omnium and its role in the supply chain. We are very proud to be home to Jaguar Land Rover in Warwickshire, and investing in the supply chain is just as important as investing in and supporting Jaguar Land Rover.

“The Midlands Engine for Growth: prospectus”, which was produced in 2015, saw 11 local enterprise partnerships join together to produce a vision for the region. I was particularly heartened to see manufacturing and engineering highlighted as the cornerstone of future success. As the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on manufacturing, I recognise how important it is to incentivise UK-based production, whether through new investment or reshoring.

Advanced manufacturing is a notable aspect of the midlands economy and can propel our competitiveness globally. As the prospectus identifies, advanced manufacturing is the bedrock of the region, employing more than 600,000 people and accounting for just less than 20% of the UK’s manufacturing output. It was good to visit Jaguar Land Rover with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on Friday, to see some of the technologies taking place there that will lead not only the region but the country, on a global level.

I welcome the Government’s support for the Catapult network. The high-value manufacturing Catapult has generated £15 of benefit to the economy for every £1 of funding. It cannot be said enough that research and development is key to our future success; it acts like a magnet for business and is the core of business and manufacturing. To lose our R and D facilities would be to endanger our manufacturing output, which is just beginning to recover. Other projects include the Energy Research Accelerator, where six world-class universities are working together with the support of £180 million of investment, as well as the energy systems Catapult, which is located in Birmingham.

Energy storage is an issue for the future and the midlands can be a driving force in developing those technologies. If we are serious about electric cars, which are the cars of the future, we need the batteries to power those cars. To be able to produce those batteries where the cars are manufactured—in Warwickshire, in the midlands, at Jaguar Land Rover—we need the power supplies to be able to make that happen.

[Mr Mitchell]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He is making a very good speech. Would he agree that apprenticeships, which have been championed by the Government, have had a real effect on the midlands region? In particular, they have stopped our region from being at the bottom of the employment league table in Britain and have significantly increased the number of new businesses that are starting and growing in the west midlands.

[Chris White]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. Apprenticeships are very much part of our future. I was also very fortunate to visit Warwickshire College with the Minister for Apprenticeships on Thursday. It was great to see how those young people are taking a totally different path for their future—one becoming more recognised for the skills that it will deliver—and to see them designing clays for cars and getting right into the process. Any encouragement we can give to make sure that business, schools and colleges are working together to increase the number and deliver on the 3 million apprenticeships that we need by 2020 can only be beneficial to our regional and national economy.

We need to have a thriving environment for innovation and tech. In my constituency, that includes the creative industries—the video games sector cluster is rapidly becoming the second or third-biggest cluster outside London. We need to create a framework in which such sectors can thrive, providing a flow of talent into the industry.

Developing a local identity on a regional level can be a catalyst for success. We have a proud tradition of manufacturing that we must build on, but other sectors can come to the fore and boost the region’s international prospects—in particular the creative and digital industries.

I hope that our strong academic base can continue to grow. The midlands is home to 25 universities and 50 further education colleges. Closing the skills gap across a variety of sectors is an integral part of the midlands engine and poses one of the greatest challenges ahead. Technological advances are shifting the needs of industry and we need to embrace the opportunities ahead, such as in Industry 4.0, and pinpoint areas that we need to strengthen, such as encouraging children to study science, technology, engineering and maths subjects. I note that the midlands engine prospectus highlighted proposals to create a network of regional science parks. I fully support efforts to push the midlands to the forefront of academic research in the UK, complementing our advanced manufacturing and technical skills base.

On a slightly negative point, productivity is a key challenge for the midlands—it is 10% lower than the national average. Improving infrastructure, as well as continued investment in science and research, could have a profound effect on reversing that figure.

In the autumn statement, the Chancellor announced that a midlands engine strategy was to be published, and I understand that more details will be provided in the coming weeks. Yesterday’s industrial strategy Green Paper pointed to places making their own unique contribution to driving national economic growth. Much has been made of the northern powerhouse and the regeneration of the north, which is an important goal, but I hope that the midlands engine can develop in parallel, working with other regions wherever prudent. We must continue to attract foreign investment, which will naturally happen as we strengthen our network of business, research and education.

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[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on securing the debate. I am sure the Minister will enjoy the opportunity to talk about the Government’s industrial strategy, but I am afraid that most attention right now is probably focused on what is happening on the other side of Parliament Square. I will return to the significance of our relationship with the European Union later.

Outside this place, many people still ask what the midlands engine is. The answer is simple: we are the midlands engine—we being the many right hon. and hon. Members who stand up for their midlands constituencies in this place, and the entrepreneurs, innovators and grafters back at home. All of us are working harder than ever, together, to build our collective identity; to develop our competitive offer; to promote the midlands to the world; and to attract people to come to us to invest, to study, to work and to live. The midlands engine is not just a brand, an organisation or a place. It is all of us working together to show that when the midlands succeeds, Britain succeeds.

The assets of the midlands engine will be familiar to everyone, not only up and down the country but throughout the world—Range Rover, Rolls-Royce, JCB, Toyota and Boots are a few of the names that have made the midlands famous. What is great about all those assets is that their industrial evolution is constant as they reinvent themselves and their products to meet the demands of our ever-changing world.

No clearer evidence for midlands resilience and ability for reinvention exists than in my constituency. The site where thousands were once employed to manufacture Raleigh bicycles is now the University of Nottingham’s innovation park, where businesses and researchers work together on everything from satellite navigation, aerospace and sustainable energy technologies, to drive-chain engineering and sustainable chemistry. The city centre site where ibuprofen was discovered by Dr Stewart Adams is now one of the UK’s largest bioscience incubators, commercialising cutting-edge research. When I came through Nottingham yesterday, I saw that the brand-new BioCity Discovery Building is almost up and finished, showing how the sector is developing and growing.

None of that is new. As the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington said, the midlands has been an engine for growth for centuries, and will be for centuries to come. The strong midlands DNA is rooted in our industrial heritage, which is reflected in our being the advanced manufacturing heartland of the nation, responsible for almost a quarter of the UK’s total manufacturing capability.

Two and a half centuries ago, new canals connected England’s major rivers, opening up the interior for the movement of raw materials and trade of finished goods. High Speed 2 can have that same transformative impact, with the potential to unlock huge economic benefits for the midlands and for the UK as a whole. To me, HS2 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to transform Britain’s infrastructure, linking the cities of the midlands and the north with fast, frequent and reliable services, connecting people and places, businesses and workers, markets and customers, driving up growth and productivity, and expanding the life chances of more than 11 million people in the midlands engine region. HS2 is not about the much mocked 20 minutes off the journey time to London—although who would not want to have even better connections to one of the world’s mega-cities? It is about improved capacity and incredible connectivity within the midlands region.

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. HS2 is not about speed; every day 4,000 people stand on trains going into and out of Birmingham.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Phase 1 of HS2 in particular is about vitally needed extra capacity, although for phase 2 connectivity and journey-time savings are important. Cutting the journey time between Nottingham and Birmingham from a dawdling 1 hour and 13 minutes to only 36 minutes will make a real difference to the choices available to workers, businesses and investors. We should not downplay that.

HS2 can and must act as a spur to regeneration and job creation. The West Midlands combined authority’s growth strategy aims to add £14 billion to the economy and to create and support 100,000 jobs. The Curzon investment plan is designed to regenerate that area around the planned HS2 station. In the east midlands, councils, local enterprise partnerships and the East Midlands chamber of commerce are working together to develop ambitious but deliverable proposals for maximising the economic potential of a new HS2 and classic-rail hub station at Toton, not only for that immediate area, important though that is, but for the whole region.

The benefits of HS2 for the region will be fully realised only if they come alongside other transport improvements. I recognise the danger of my sounding like a broken record, but Conservative Cabinet Ministers came to the east midlands before the most recent elections promising to deliver our region’s top transport priority—the electrification of the midland main line—only then to pause it, unpause it, delay it by four years and now give the impression of wanting to scrap it altogether. That is not good enough. The midlands deserves 21st century infrastructure, and the Government must deliver on the promises they made to our region if we are to be ready for the global challenges ahead. I am sure the Minister understands the importance of the midland main line electrification to our region, so I hope he will speak to his Department for Transport colleagues and ask them to think again.

I remain optimistic about what the midlands has to offer and its ability to seize the coming opportunities. However, I cannot fail to sound a note of caution about the UK’s future relationship with the EU and the profound risks that that poses to the midlands engine. The midlands is the manufacturing heart of the UK, so the potential loss of tariff-free access to the single market and the potential imposition of customs controls would surely have a chilling effect on those businesses I mentioned. We know that Toyota is considering how it can survive in a post-Brexit UK. Boots tells me that it is deeply concerned about our being outside the European Medicines Agency. Our world-class universities are extremely worried about their ability to maintain their position in global league tables without access to the Horizon 2020 funding, and without the ability to recruit and retain the highest-calibre students and staff from around the world.

In the coming weeks and months, therefore, I will press the Government hard to ensure that they do not put obstacles in the way of the bright future that our region is heading towards.

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[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I welcome this debate on the midlands engine, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) secured. It is also a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway), who is a fellow east midlands MP.

This year, among other special dates, I am celebrating 30 years of living in the midlands. When I first moved there, I thought I would move on and not stay, but the midlands has offered me so much, both socially and from a work point of view, that I have stayed. I moved from Yorkshire as a result of a promotion. People tend to move further south as they move on in their careers, but the midlands has so much to offer, as we have heard from both west midlands and east midlands MPs, that more people need to hear about what we have in the midlands, and that is what we are doing today.

[Mr Mitchell]

May I confirm, as everyone will agree, that in moving from Yorkshire to the midlands my hon. Friend has been promoted?

[Maggie Throup]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that. I do not want to offend anyone from Yorkshire who still lives there, but I am proud to say that I live in the midlands and represent a midlands seat. It is really important that we bang the drums and fight our corner to ensure that we get everything that we need to make the midlands a true engine for growth.

Just yesterday, the Green Paper on our new modern industrial strategy was published. Although I welcome that and its focus on skills and training, it would be remiss of me, as the representative of Erewash, not to stand up for traditional industries as well as new technologies. So many traditional industries are taking on board new technologies, and it is important that we combine those. I am proud to represent a constituency that still makes. Despite being called Nottingham lace, it is made in Ilkeston in Derbyshire—work that one out. It is still made on the traditional looms in historic mill buildings.

I am also proud to represent a constituency that proudly proclaims to those arriving at Long Eaton station that it is a UK centre of excellence for upholstery manufacture. We export sofas and chairs, and the upholstery is sold in some of the UK’s top stores; it can also be bought in some cheaper stores. Many seats that people sit on at home or in friends’ houses, and in hotels and public buildings, are made in Long Eaton. We must never forget that there are many traditional businesses that boost midlands growth.

Erewash is a place that provides a great example of how traditional and modern industry meet. Anyone driving through the constituency is likely to see storage yards full of concrete pipes and drains. Perhaps that seems strange, but I was delighted when a few weeks ago I officially opened a new “magic manhole” plant at Stanton Bonna, which will help to speed things up, provide consistent quality, and decrease waste. Interestingly, when the pipes leave my constituency we shall probably never see them again, because they go underground. Whether they are for new housing, industrial sites, Crossrail or—fingers crossed—HS2, those reinforced concrete pipes made in Erewash will form a critical part of construction in years to come.

As I have explained, Erewash already plays its part in the midlands engine; but I know it can go further. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to the area and their ambition to make the midlands a true engine for growth. We have heard about the west midlands, but I want to think about the east midlands. The commitment includes £250 million of investment funds providing access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises. My constituency has many SMEs rather than huge employers, so that is important for Erewash. There is £60 million for the energy research accelerator, and some of it is going to the University of Nottingham, which is close to my constituency. Also, there is multimillion pound investment to make the most of the HS2 hubs in the west and east midlands; the east midland HS2 hub abuts my constituency. That brings me to the subject of skills, specialist STEM subjects, and engineering in particular.

HS2 and the HS2 hub create economic and employment opportunities for my constituency, but we need to make sure people have the right skills. We should also not forget the residents who will lose their homes and the businesses that will lose their premises to make way for the track, which will come right through my constituency. It is vital that they get timely and appropriate compensation, especially as many of them have lived in their homes for 30 or 40 years; some have lived in them all their lives.

To maximise the potential of HS2, residents need the right skills—including employees of flagship companies, some of which have already been mentioned, such as Rolls-Royce, Bombardier and Toyota. Businesses and the local economy can continue to be successful only if people and goods can get around, as has been mentioned, and if there is the right infrastructure. The road network across and around Erewash is already creaking at the seams. I welcome the benefits from the east midlands HS2 hub and the additional proposals for 2,000 new homes, with light industry, on a brownfield site in Stanton, but we need dramatically to improve the road network, and to bring it into the 21st century. Otherwise the area will become a huge car park, and that will not stimulate growth but stifle it. That is why I am calling for an additional motorway junction on the M1, to help ease current gridlock and keep Erewash moving well into the future.

We need the investment and commitment that the midlands engine brings, but we also need more joined-up thinking; and we need to make sure that no area is left behind. It must not revolve around the big cities—Birmingham in the west midlands, and Nottingham and Derby in the east midlands. Too often I get the feeling that my local enterprise partnership, D2N2, puts Erewash at the bottom of the list. We need to address that. The midlands engine must be maximised, as a strategy and an investment mechanism. We must nurture full collaboration between businesses and universities. It should be used as a vehicle to attract domestic and foreign investment, on top of what the Government have put in, if we are to have long-term, sustained economic growth across the whole of the midlands. We need to make sure that the midlands is a true engine for growth for the whole UK.