Budget Resolutions

Anna Turley Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

After seven years of economic failure, missed deficit reduction targets, deteriorating public services, increasingly insecure employment, and an explosion in the number of food banks supporting working people, my expectations for this Conservative Budget were already low, but have we ever had a Budget so lacking in substance? With breathtaking complacency, it made no mention of the greatest economic challenge facing this country: Brexit. It is clear from the debate this afternoon that the Government have no clue about what they want from Brexit or how much it is going to cost.

Eliminating the UK’s deficit by 2015 used to be the Government’s overriding goal. That target has now been dumped and public debt is climbing to almost £2 trillion. Is this the long-term economic plan so often wildly cheered from the Government Benches? Our public services have paid the price of failure. NHS waiting lists are rising, and our social care system faces a huge funding black hole. In Redcar and Cleveland, the amount spent on social care has gone down in real terms by a fifth under this Government despite rising demand, and there are 400 fewer police officers keeping our streets safe in Cleveland.

Our schools are losing funding, too. In Redcar and Cleveland, schools will lose a whopping £7.8 million by 2020—£422 per pupil in one of the most deprived areas in the country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, while our primary schools are in the top 10 in the country, our secondary schools desperately need more support, and the newly departed Lord Heseltine highlighted our poor secondary education in his report on the Tees valley. When the Government close our steelworks and batter our local economy, leading to the loss of over 3,000 jobs and a youth unemployment rate two and a half times the national average, the Secretary of State for Education owes it to our region to invest in the future of our young people, not to snuff out their potential before they have begun.

Teesside has suffered from the loss of well-paid industrial jobs and from falling living standards. Unemployment in the Tees valley has been above 10% for most of the time that the Conservatives have been in office. Austerity has hit many families in my constituency. Over 2,000 people were affected by the bedroom tax and others by unfair benefit sanctions and cuts to tax credits. Living standards are falling, with average annual wages forecast to rise much more slowly than expected over the next four years. At the same time, families are turning to credit to make ends meet. The household debt forecast has been revised up to £189 billion by 2021.

What Teessiders really needed from this Budget was support on the big challenges we face: infrastructure, industry, and skills to give our local economy the boost it needs. Despite the difficulties of the past few years, I strongly believe that our region is on the cusp of a new industrial renaissance. A high degree of investment and development is coming to the region, including the petrochemicals site at Wilton and the former SSI site. Sirius Minerals and MGT Power are both investing in Redcar and Cleveland. However, that investment, and the opportunities that come with it, will not benefit local people unless there is a skills revolution and we get the necessary technical education to capitalise on future industrial opportunities.

The Chancellor did not face up to the challenges facing our country or our workforce. He did not take action to address the unfairness that is holding back areas such as mine. The north-east continues to lose out on regional investment, funding for infrastructure, and investment in education and skills to develop the industries of the future. The Budget made no mention of the north of England, of the so-called northern powerhouse or, indeed, of the industrial strategy, as pointed out by my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright).

What is more, the future of Teesside’s economic resilience will depend upon the success of our small and medium-sized businesses. Many small local businesses have been in touch with me about the huge impact of the Government’s business rates revaluation. The Chancellor’s measures to soften the burden are welcome, but there will still be a rise for most. Moreover, the area’s self-employed workers will not have been happy to learn that their national insurance contributions will rise, despite a manifesto promise by the Tories not to increase them. Many ex-steelworkers went self-employed after the closures, with Government funding actively encouraging them, and now many will be hit by the rise. The wrong priorities were at the heart of this Budget. It was a paper-thin, miserable, brittle Budget that came after seven years of crippling economic failure and austerity. I heard no vision in it for a post-Brexit Britain or for the Tees valley.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I want to focus on the need to boost skills and jobs in our country, especially in manufacturing, following last week’s Budget. That is especially pertinent as we begin the process of leaving the EU.

It is unsurprising that, in a constituency-wide Brexit listening exercise I conducted, Nissan, which is based in my constituency, dominated, especially in terms of trade, investment, jobs and skills. Last week’s Budget was the perfect opportunity for the Chancellor to lay the foundations for strong economic growth that is resilient to any storms we may weather during the EU negotiations, but, sadly, we were left wanting. The announcements we did get on skills did not go far enough, and they must be placed in the context of the Government’s wider approach to education and skills.

Since 2010, we have seen the further education budget cut by 14% in real terms. That is a cash reduction from £3.18 billion in 2010-11 to £2.94 billion in 2015-16. That is compounded by the fact that the non-apprenticeship adult skills budget has been depleted by 54%. However, that negligent approach by the Government has not scuppered the innovative work by great employers in my constituency. Only last Friday, I was honoured to open Unipres’s new training academy, which will help to boost the skills of our local workforce by offering much-needed apprenticeship opportunities in engineering and manufacturing. It goes without saying that manufacturing is symbiotic with the north-east. We are the country’s makers and builders—I am pleased that Stoke colleagues are not here to shout me down—due in part to the innate talents of the people in our region and the skills we inherently have within us to manufacture with high quality and high productivity.

I like to call my constituency the manufacturing hub of our region, perhaps the country, with the likes of Nissan, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Unipres, Rayovac and Gestamp, to name but a few, all based there. The manufacturing presence in our region will only be strengthened with the creation of the IAMP—International Advanced Manufacturing Park—which will be based not only in my constituency but that of my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn). However, the success of the IAMP and manufacturers in my constituency—from the large, some of which I have mentioned, right down to small and medium-sized enterprises such as AdFab Ltd, Washington Components, and PFF Packaging—depend on the Government strengthening their approach to skills and jobs. This is especially important with Brexit on the horizon.

There is one way in which Ministers could easily help to bolster our manufacturing, not only in the north-east, but across the country—through catapults. I am not talking about the ancient war machines but instead

“a network of world-leading centres designed to transform the UK’s capability for innovation in specific areas and help drive future economic growth.”

A number of catapults have been started across the country, yet there seem to be none for materials. This means there is no support for the innovation and development of materials such as steel, ceramics, glass and plastics, all of which are crucial to the dominant industry in Sunderland—the automotive sector. If we were to see a catapult for materials like the industry-supported proposal by the Materials Processing Institute in Redcar that received cross-party endorsement in January from the all-party parliamentary group on steel, this could have a positive impact on the whole of the manufacturing industry. However, it would especially help the Nissan supply chain, which Nissan has said needs re-powering.

[Anna Turley]

I appreciate my hon. Friend mentioning the fantastic institute in my constituency. Does she share my concern at a story on WalesOnline last week saying that Swansea is predicted to receive £80 million for a steel science centre that would almost directly duplicate the work that is happening at the MPI in Redcar and could then impact on the Nissan supply chain that she mentions?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I do not want to take anything away from Wales, especially with colleagues from Wales in the Chamber, but duplication does not make any sense, especially when there is so little funding around, and we definitely do not want to take any support away from Nissan. I am pleased that my hon. Friend made that point.

Currently, only a minority of parts used to build a Nissan car are made here in the UK, through a 38,000-strong supply chain workforce across the UK, with 27,000 of those jobs based in the north-east.