English Devolution
Andy MacNae Excerpts(6 days, 10 hours ago)
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Jim McMahon
This is about partnership, about tone and about how we can work together. Because there has been a fair amount of talk in the sector about reorganisation and devolution, even before the White Paper a number of authorities had approached the Government saying that they wanted to have a conversation about local government reorganisation and/or devolution. We have had to respond that we cannot have a hundred hares running all over the place without a transparent plan and timescale that can be understood so that people can make a judgment about whether this option is right for their area or not. What we will have is a proposal to double-run a devolution priority programme alongside a local government reorganisation, with a key point where those two pieces of work must come together for joint decision making. That will at least mean that every authority knows what stage it has reached, and can make a choice: is it at the right point in the process to opt in, or will it need more time?
The point about the backstop is very important. As I have said, there is no map that we are intending to impose anywhere. Let us suppose that within a region we have an agreement to compile every county bar one, and we reach the end of the current Parliament. In that event, I think it legitimate to say, “Well, there is nowhere else to go.” It is fairly self-explanatory that there will be a fundamental strategic authority in that area, and that is the type of process that we are considering. We are not considering redrawing the map of England and imposing this in one fell swoop. It is about partnership and working with local areas, and so far those conversations have been very fruitful.
Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)
I hugely welcome the White Paper. For us who are in the frontline trying to deliver services to our residents under the dysfunctional two-tier system that exists in Lancashire, this is a breath of fresh air. It is exactly what we have been requesting for years. Does the Minister agree that now is the time for Lancashire leaders to put aside short-term personal and political considerations, not to wait for the Bill to be published, and to work with urgency in drawing up proposals for new local government structures that are focused on the needs of residents and, ultimately, bring the highest level of devolution to Lancashire?
Jim McMahon
I entirely understand that there are local tensions in Lancashire, to put it mildly, but my experience of council leaders in all parties and at county, district and unitary level has been positive. Even when there are differences, they are shared in a respectful way. I would not underestimate the progress of the level 2 agreement that we have in Lancashire, which will see a devolution of powers relating to, for instance, skills and compulsory purchase orders as a first step towards overall devolution. The agreement contains a commitment that by autumn next year a proposal for a mayoral combined authority will be submitted to the Government, with or without local government reorganisation. We have been very clear about our direction on local government reorganisation, and our expectation is that those in Lancashire and other places have heard about that direction and will act accordingly. In the end, times change. My son’s primary school in Oldham had the Lancashire education committee plaque on it; in Lancashire county hall, there is the Oldham plaque. Times change and boundaries change, but people and communities do not, and the Government who represent them have to be fit for purpose.
Building Safety and Resilience
Andy MacNae Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Please allow me to start by congratulating the hon. Members for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) and for Guildford (Zöe Franklin), and my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) on their quite fabulous maiden speeches. I am sorry to have to correct all of them, but my constituency is in fact the most beautiful and the most brilliant in the country.
Oliver Ryan
Slanderous!
I stand here, honoured beyond belief, to represent the great towns of Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield—towns that are part of the story of our nation. This is the land of dramatic sandstone avenues, of hills and skies, of romantic scenery in the shadows of Pendle Hill. This is the land of regimented urban landscapes, of terrace tops and towers nestled among chimneys and waterways, cushioned by villages, farms, country pubs and proper pints. We are England and Lancastrian and we are proud.
Burnley, the “meadow by the Brun”, first recorded in the 12th century, has long been a hub of culture and commerce. We have a 13th-century market, the 14th-century Towneley Hall plays, and the 15th-century St Peter’s church. Indeed, coming over the moors from the wrong side of the Pennines, Charlotte Brontë visited Gawthorpe Hall in Padiham, Wordsworth wrote of the site of Pendle Hill, and Burnley’s most prolific poet, Henry Houlding, led a literary renaissance for northern towns in the 19th century.
Once the epicentre of the global cotton trade, the workers of our towns built this country. It was said at its height that Burnley’s cotton industry had clothed Britain by breakfast and the rest of the world by dinner. We are a birthplace of movements, too—suffragettes such as Margaret Aldersley, and fighters, leaders and thinkers. Non-conformists are we—radicals and reformers—and once the seat of a Labour leader no less in Arthur Henderson.
I say all this because I want to stress that our story did not start or end with the mills. Looms for a long time were our tools. In our hands was the industrial world made, but now we are so much more. We do not buy the standard story of decline. We are a place determined, with eyes focused on the future, hungry to play our part.
By the way, we have no greater example of Burnley endurance and enterprise than Burnley Football Club. Yes, sometimes in the face of emotional trauma—at times extreme—they are twice champions of England and one-time winners of the FA cup. Let me say, I believe for the first time ever in this House, “Up the Clarets!”
As towns, we are now a thriving, dynamic, multicultural symbol of renewal and creativity. To be made in east Lancashire is to be a benchmark of quality, particularly in our manufacturing, aerospace sciences and cultural industries, with world-beating, amazing, innovative companies putting us on the map. We are also unusual politically, in that the constituency has been represented by all three major parties in the past 10 years alone, although I hope to bring a very lengthy period of stability in that regard.
Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield are so often painted as towns with problems and extensive poverty, which is true, but to end our description there is to misunderstand our mindset, our mission, our sense of history and community. Our fight is not in trading narratives as to how we got here. We have problems, yes, but we do not simply retreat to the warm nostalgia of our history. We know that that way lies only stagnation. Our fight is in creating solutions for tomorrow. Less interested in rhetoric, storytelling and ideology, towns such as mine want outcomes. For us, one’s ability to deliver solutions means a lot more than the colour of a rosette. Outcomes are what matters. What is good is what works. In our public services, that means dependable quality, transparency, choice, the interests of users coming first and an approach that challenges every vested interest in the public interest.
Reflecting on this mantra and the debate today, I want to talk a little about our housing stock. First raised by my predecessor, Peter Pike, in his maiden speech of 1983, the once proud regimented sandstone avenues that I spoke of earlier—once a step up for families—are now in a poor and worsening state. Too many of my constituents live in substandard, under-insulated, cold and mouldy homes. Low land values lock out investment, but, more critically, lock out families from the decent accommodation that they deserve and write off whole communities as just not worth the investment. If we are to continue to thrive we need more housing, newer housing, more social housing and a decent retrofit programme not seen on a scale since the last Labour Government. It is only through that growth that we can achieve the sort of improvements in our public services that we need. That is the only way that we will attract the secure jobs and dynamic workforce of the future.
Too many of our young people are stuck in a generational cycle of worklessness, which holds back entire families, because of a lack of opportunities, skills, connectivity and, actually, confidence. We will only truly grow as a country when people in places like ours feel that growth touches them; when prosperity reaches the doorsteps of our terraces; when we break the cycle and say, “If you have the will, we will give you the way. No one left behind.” In my time here, I hope to represent to the best of my ability those values and ambitions.
At this juncture, as is tradition, I pay tribute to my predecessors: in Burnley and Padiham, Antony Higginbotham; and in Brierfield and Nelson East, Andrew Stephenson. Both very decent and hard-working men, they campaigned on many local issues in their years in this House, and had many friends across the House, which was testament to their character. I genuinely wish them both well for the future.
I am the great-grandson of Irish immigrants, from Dublin and across Ireland, who made their life in Manchester. I was aged two, and one of two kids to a single mum, when Labour took office in 1997. It is because of that Government that my mother was supported through illness to raise us, by an NHS with the time and resources to care. Schemes such as Building Schools for the Future, first praised by my predecessor Kitty Ussher in her maiden speech in 2005, gave me this future, and I am one of many. We stand on the shoulders of giants in this place, but I was able to climb on to those shoulders only because of a supportive family, who are watching from the Gallery, and the ladder that that Labour Government provided for kids like me and families like mine, from towns like mine. I know that this new Labour Government will strive to do the same, and I for one am enormously proud to be a part of it.