Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Brandon Lewis and Jason McCartney

Monday 9th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

My local Kirklees Council has today begun a long-overdue consultation on its local plan. Does the Minister agree that the council must listen to local communities as well as developers, and must take into account the Government’s £1 billion brownfield first campaign?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Another area entering into consultation is welcome news. It is vital that local area plans represent and take into account the views of the local community. I encourage the local authority to listen very carefully to residents in his area.

High Streets

Debate between Brandon Lewis and Jason McCartney

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

Our high streets benefit from wider community access, whether that includes fire stations, the police, children’s centres, the NHS, retail, leisure or hospitality. The hon. Member for City of Durham says she wants the town centre to be the heart of the community and a real community hub. I applaud that. I am just not quite sure how, in the same speech, she managed to argue against that by proposing to ban conversion to residential, which brings more people to our high streets. The hon. Gentleman is right: people care deeply about their high streets because they are the centres of their community. We want to see vibrant, viable high streets where people live, shop, use services, and spend their leisure time, and that includes a safe night-time economy.

[Jason McCartney]

Will the Minister join me in saying how disappointing it was that the shadow Minister had nothing to say about car parking charges in the centres of our small towns? Labour-run Kirklees council still imposes inflexible car parking charges in Holmfirth, which is a small market town. No wonder shoppers go to Morrisons two miles down the road, where they can park for free. Will he encourage Labour-run Kirklees to be more flexible and have more supportive car parking charges?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point; councils should look closely at their car parking charges, not least because, as they will know if they have any real business sense—I would hope that even a Labour council would seriously consider its future financing opportunities—successful high streets will drive business rates retention. However, for that they need footfall and for footfall all the evidence shows we need easy, cheap car parking.

I will take no lectures from Labour on our high streets.

Regional Government (North)

Debate between Brandon Lewis and Jason McCartney

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I am very happy to discuss that with him. He highlights that where things are working more positively and there is real progress around the country is where there is no artificial, centrally determined sector, region or body, but something that is led by the people in the community. Local enterprise partnerships have such ability and opportunity because they are led by the people in the communities, who understand their traditions and have a vested interest in seeing their local area grow and in working together. We must trust local people and locally elected and democratically accountable councillors to work together in the interests of their communities. That is what localism is about.

Let me touch on how this Government are devolving power to support that process. The Localism Act, which I have mentioned, and the Local Government Finance Act 2012 have devolved more power and greater control over finances than ever before. For example, the general power of competence turns previous assumptions completely on their heads. It gives councils real power to get on and do things, and the room to take action and innovate without seeking permission from the centre, as they previously had to do. We have un-ring-fenced funding, given local authorities greater control over their resources, and put in place proposals to encourage local economic growth.

We are delivering growth and jobs. The hon. Member for Halifax mentioned the imbalance in our economy. We are already addressing that through such things as city deals, which are recasting the relationship between central Government and our cities. They are giving our great cities the powers and tools that they need to drive economic growth in their areas. For example, through those deals, we have supported cities with a £75 million regeneration fund for Liverpool; an earn-back proposal from Manchester that could be worth more than £200 million; a new development deal in Newcastle worth £60 million; and smaller new development deals in Sheffield and Nottingham.

I will focus for a moment on Yorkshire and Humber, which includes the hon. Lady’s constituency. In that area, we have supported, among other things, the Aire Valley Leeds enterprise zone, which focuses on life sciences, advanced engineering and low carbon industries, and aims to create 3,780 jobs; the Humber renewable energy super cluster, which is creating 4,850 jobs; and the Sheffield city region enterprise zone, which aims to create more than 8,400 additional jobs, with an additional £400 million in economic output. We have also invested more than £73 million for local enterprise partnerships in Yorkshire and Humber as part of the Growing Places fund, and a total of £264 million through rounds 1 to 3 of the regional growth fund—it has already been mentioned—which has created or safeguarded more than 63,000 jobs over 10 years and leveraged £1.433 billion of private sector investment.

We are also opening the way for local authorities to work in partnership across economically significant areas through the establishment of combined authorities, which provide a practical way for local authorities to work together. For example, the establishment of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has brought together local authority leaders. It will strengthen their voice and influence, thus increasing their ability to promote their area with businesses and other partners, and to grow investment and deliver jobs for local people. We are establishing other combined authorities in the Sheffield city region and west Yorkshire. With the authorities in the north-east, we are also considering how a combined authority would support them in further strengthening their leadership and economic development.

That comes back to the main point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman). The approach is led by the local community, which comes together to tell us in government what they want and what will help them, rather than our having a top-down approach.

[Jason McCartney]

I thank the Minister for telling us about all the investment in the north. To include transport, will he join me in welcoming the investment by First TransPennine Express, which has been announced today, of £60 million for 40 new carriages? That will increase capacity by 30%—linking Leeds to Manchester, Newcastle and Hull—which is more good news for the north.

[Brandon Lewis]

Absolutely. That is great news for the north of our country of investment coming in.

As time is short, I will just say that we are as enthusiastic and committed as anybody would be about growth and devolving powers—taking power away from Whitehall and giving it back to local people. However, what we will not do and what would be wholly wrong is to take powers from Whitehall and put them in an artificial construct, which creates pointless discussion, bureaucracy and inefficiency. Local residents have no confidence in and show no loyalty or commitment to such constructs, which therefore tend to end in failure. Our approach is already devolving power and driving growth. We have opened the door to the significantly wider transfers of powers not only to the north, but to the south, east and west—to our entire country—without any new bureaucracy. I hope that the hon. Member for Halifax will come to see that it is our approach that, in driving growth through decentralisation, will realistically achieve her aims, which are ones that she and we must share.