Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Catherine West and James Morris

Thursday 9th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the maiden speech by the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer); I have a sneaking suspicion that she is going to be quite a formidable presence on the Opposition Benches during the next five years.

Britain has come a long way over the past five years. Tough decisions have been made to get the country’s deficit under control, to reform the welfare system, to make business more competitive, and to create new jobs. Unemployment in my constituency has fallen by more than 50% since 2010. In the black country, part of which I represent, there has been a significant manufacturing revival such that the region has been one of the fastest-growing of any in the United Kingdom over the past two years.

At the heart of this Budget is a recognition that we need to continue the work to rebalance the British economy away from London and the south-east, to make sure that we have a productive and balanced economy in the midlands, the west midlands and the north. Devolution of power, funding and decision making is absolutely fundamental if the regions of the United Kingdom, including the black country, are to reach their potential.

We need to encourage more jobs and investment in the black country, where we have a huge number of brownfield sites that can be used for development. One need only think of the industrial heritage of the black country to know that huge swathes of its land can be used for the development of industrial sites and for housing. I urge the black country’s local enterprise partnership and local authorities to identify appropriate brownfield sites for economic development to bring new jobs, taking advantage of the powers and responsibilities that the Government are offering to develop those sites. We should not go down the route of a recent idea by Dudley council to develop a huge industrial site on green-belt land just outside Halesowen. That is a very bad idea. I am the first to want to get jobs and investment into the black country, but the policy of Dudley’s LEP and local authority should be to focus first on brownfield in developing new jobs and opportunities.

At the heart of the plan to make Britain a more productive economy is further investment in skills to make sure that our young people are equipped to take advantage of the opportunities out there. That is why I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget of a levy on larger companies to encourage further investment in quality apprenticeships. There have been 4,000 new apprenticeship starts in my constituency since 2010, but we need more and we need them to be better matched with the available opportunities in the local economy. That will build on the success of the Government’s city deal in the previous Parliament, which saw a significant level of investment, with about £1 million coming into the area for the development of a science and technology apprenticeship centre at Halesowen College.

Those are precisely the sorts of high-quality opportunities that we need in our local economy to encourage a greater focus on science and engineering—for example, to support the supply chain of Jaguar Land Rover. At the heart of this Budget, and absolutely fundamental to the future of the country and of the regions of Britain, is the continuation of the work that we started over the past five years to tackle the productivity problem by investing in high-quality skills so that people can take advantage of these opportunities.

While the Budget recognises the need to rebalance the economy and to make our businesses more competitive by cutting business taxes and creating more jobs, there is also—this has not been mentioned so far—the welcome commitment to further substantial real-terms increases in our national health service over the next five years. The Budget is clear in its commitment that this Government will support Sir Simon Stevens’s five-year plan for the NHS to continue the work of making it one of the best health services in the world. This Government, through this Budget, are committed to those real-terms increases over the next five years.

As the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is on the Front Bench, I want to make the case—which fits into the narrative of the new Government on one nation Conservatism, supporting people and making a more resilient and productive economy—that some of the new money being allocated to the NHS should be focused on improving mental health care. I was chairman of the all-party group on mental health in the previous Parliament. The argument is strong, given that mental health will become the most important health challenge that we face over the next 20 to 25 years. I am pleased that the Conservative party manifesto had specific pledges on mental health in the NHS, focusing on extending the range of availability of psychological therapies across the country, that are now being translated into action in government. The previous Labour Government introduced the IAPT—improving access to psychological therapies—programme, and the coalition Government invested £500 million in developing it. Now we need to take it further to give it to anybody who needs it.

[Catherine West]

I support the hon. Gentleman’s comments about mental health. I hope that some of the extra funding could go towards reducing the long waiting lists for IAPT, particularly where people are on benefits such as employment and support allowance and want to get off them and back into work. I hope we can work at a cross-party level to reduce the waiting lists for those crucial counselling therapies.

[James Morris]

I thank the hon. Lady; she makes a very good point. The Conservative party manifesto had a commitment to extend the range and availability of psychological therapies. The Department for Work and Pensions has been running pilots on specific forms of back-to-work support for people suffering from mental health problems—for example, individual placement and support.

We need to invest further in child and adolescent mental health services because—this is why I raise the issue in the context of the Budget—it makes economic sense to do so. It fits into the thrust of the Budget, which is that we need to build a more resilient and productive economy. We have a commitment to invest in perinatal mental health. If we get the investment in mental health care right, it will lead to huge economic benefits for Britain, a more productive society, stronger families and more resilient individuals—people capable of stepping up to the plate and taking advantage of the opportunities out there.

I urge Ministers to be sympathetic to the cause of mental health in the national health service as they consider further investment in our public health system, and to continue the work of achieving the Conservative manifesto commitment to greater parity of esteem between mental and physical health in the NHS.

A more productive economy, a more competitive business environment with lower taxes and a focus on high-quality skills and further job creation in a highly competitive global economy, combined with investment in our health service and in meeting the key health challenges of the future, such as mental health care and building more individual resilience—all that is the true measure of a one nation Conservative Government. We are creating an economy that can generate millions more jobs, building on the jobs that we have already created in the last five years, and a more entrepreneurial society, in which people are prepared to take risks and invest for the future. We are building not only a more competitive economy, but a more compassionate society.