Spending Review 2020

Baroness Redfern Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Redfern (Con) [V]]

My Lords, in this incredibly difficult year, I welcome the many positives displayed in the spending review as the Government juggle the nation’s finances. The business sector has received grants of £11.6 billion through the pandemic and is now to receive a further £159 million for 2021-22, with an additional £56.5 million supporting British Business Bank start-up loans. We must do all we can to support businesses, large and small, to build back our economy. I am pleased, too, to support the £4 billion levelling-up fund to tackle the fragmented funding system for local areas and £1.2 billion to subsidise the rollout of gigabit-capable broadband.

I turn to energy and growth, where energy demand is still outstripping growth in renewable energy supply, ensuring that declines in emissions are permanent. I welcome the commitment of £12 billion to support our green industrial revolution, prioritising green infrastructure projects and creating more green jobs. Here in this part of the UK, we are home to the largest offshore wind farm, steering the Humber to the forefront of the revolution in carbon capture and storage. I hope that the Humber will benefit from the £1 billion infrastructure fund, which in turn would support our heavy steel and manufacturing industry base.

I also welcome the Government’s commitment in the free ports bidding prospectus. What is better than being a free port—particularly here, having the port of Immingham situated on the south bank and handling more than 55 million tonnes of UK cargo annually, playing a critical part in the UK’s supply chain? There is a platform that could help to realise a global and national opportunity for the wider Humber region, the energy estuary gateway to Europe. The North Sea is certainly one of the UK’s major assets.

We are in challenging times, but as the Government aim for an agenda that can work and which emboldens the UK’s determination to do just that, I welcome this Statement.