Skills and Post-16 Education Bill (Second sitting)

Andy Carter Excerpts

Committee Debates: 2nd Sitting & Committee stage
Tuesday 30th November 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Lia Nici]

Not at all!

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will give way in a second.

[Andy Carter]

It is not about Humberside.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman’s bit of Warrington is in Cheshire or Lancashire based on the old boundaries.

[Andy Carter]

I want to address that.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Boundaries matter. I say that as a patron of the Friends of Real Lancashire.

Coming back to amendment 40, the cleaner these boundaries can be, the better. I get that local economies can spread across artificial local government boundaries. I know that because just down the road from where I live is Glossop, in the High Peak in Derbyshire. To all intents and purposes, Glossop is a Greater Manchester town. It looks to Greater Manchester, all its transport links are into Manchester and its healthcare is currently part of Greater Manchester. I get that there is always going to be a degree of “This boundary does not work,” but if we are looking at a particular strategy and then having to engage with a whole range of public bodies in developing and signing off that strategy, it gets overly complicated if we end up having a mismatch of different boundaries, in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle has already described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Gwynne]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, but it is more than that; we also need to ensure that the strategy works for the entire area. However we define the geographical area, there will be a strategy for it. If there is a mismatch of different public bodies and local authorities in that area, we may well find that one local authority thinks the strategy is working brilliantly in its area—it may well be—but the neighbouring local authority, whose area might be only partly covered by the strategy, might feel like the poor relation without a voice. I am worried about that. I want clarity and for things to be tidy, which is why I support amendment 40. Before I sit down, I promised to give way to, I hope, a fellow Lancastrian.

[Andy Carter]

I think the hon. Gentleman will find that I am in Cheshire—[Laughter.] I understand the point that he is making, but it is not a clear situation. Warrington is a really interesting area because, although many people who live in Warrington work in Manchester or Liverpool, the skills strategy is set by Cheshire and Warrington local enterprise partnership. We are a mid-way commuter town, and although we might want to set a skills strategy for Warrington, the employers that people look towards are in the two major cities that sit either side. His OCD situation may well find that challenging, but it is not as simple or as clear for many areas around the country.

[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Gentleman has made a great case for north-west regional devolution in that case. I get what he says, but if Greater Manchester is to have a strategy, the Greater Manchester chamber, which will lead on the strategy, and the combined authority and Mayor, who have to be consulted on the strategy, cover the whole of Greater Manchester—that is nice and tidy. If he wants to make the case for Warrington to become an 11th borough of Greater Manchester so that we can placate my OCD-ness, I am more than happy to welcome Warrington into the club.