Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

I rise to speak with mixed emotions. I am delighted to speak about the benefits of the Union, but it is depressing to be here yet again speaking about the divisions that Brexit has caused in the past few years—even more so, given that the debate has been brought to the Chamber by the Scottish National party.

What we have seen throughout the debate is hypocrisy. There is hypocrisy from the Scottish National party, which wants to hear about the benefits of democracy for independence, but does not want to accept the democracy that it is not in favour of. I am thinking of the Brexit referendum and the two general elections since then. There is the hypocrisy of Labour Members, who almost want to pretend that the past few years have not happened. They are still talking as if Brexit should not have happened and we should still be a member of the single market and the customs union. They lost the argument then and they have lost it ever since.

We have got Brexit done, and we have fulfilled a manifesto commitment. We will make a success of it, but to do so we need to come together. It is time to put the divisions of the past few years behind us and make the best of the situation. We have a levelling-up, one-nation Government who are committed to making sure not only that all regions but that all nations in the Union benefit.

Delivering Brexit has been a monumental occasion, and it means that we have been able to put the stranglehold of Parliament behind us. We can talk about the priorities of the British people, whether that is crime, as we have seen in the past couple of days, education, health, defence, or supporting businesses and creating jobs. The Scottish National party should take note and send those messages to Holyrood. It should begin to focus on those priorities and look at constitutional arguments that, quite frankly, are already in the past.

On the back of Brexit, we have been able to focus on the UK’s internal market. We have been able to focus on a vaccine programme that is pretty much world leading, certainly within Europe. Again, we hear time after time from Opposition Members that we should have joined the EU vaccine programme. Where would that have got us? We would be nowhere near where we are now. We have vaccinated roughly 40% of the population, because we were not part of the programme to which those Members were intrinsically linked.

We have signed up to many trade deals, for example, the continuity trade deals and the trade deal with Japan, and there are trade deals we are working on. We are truly a global Britain, and we are the better for it because of the Union, not in spite of it. Again, we have heard arguments about how Scotland will be stronger away from the Union, without any thought about what it will do about defence or currency, or having any real policies. The SNP’s one policy is separation, and that is not for the Union and it is not for global Britain.

Government's Management of the Economy

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) if only to highlight how she is wrong about 10 years of Conservative management of the economy. There has been much talk about how the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) left that infamous note that said how sorry he was that there was no money left. Not content with doing that damage to the Treasury, he is now wanting to do that to the west midlands, too.

What we see from the Labour party and definitely from the Front Bench is a collective amnesia. Let us not forget that, in 2010 and in 2015, Labour, too, was campaigning on a platform of tackling the deficit and delivering its own austerity, so I guess that all cuts are bad unless they are Labour cuts. We have seen the shadow Chancellor today again inadvertently mislead by confusing the deficit with the debt. The deficit, which we campaigned on and have spoken about for over 10 years, has come down massively; that is what we campaigned on, not tackling the debt issue.

After nine years of economic growth, pre-covid we saw the highest level of recorded employment, an increase in the national insurance threshold giving 41 million people a tax cut, and an income tax cut for 32 million. When that is combined with the national insurance threshold change, it means that a typical basic rate taxpayer is now over £1,200 a year better off, which in turn means more money into the local economy. The number of workless households is down by a third, income inequality is down, there are 1.5 million more businesses in the economy, and there is the pension triple lock.

I know you are thinking, Mr Deputy Speaker, that these are the greatest hits of the last decade. However, that is not the case: this is just the first album, with the second album still to come. So what do we have? We have £14 billion extra for schools in the next three years, hundreds of billions of pounds being put into infrastructure investment, over £30 billion extra for the NHS, £1 billion for the future high streets fund, £3.6 billion for the towns fund, and £4 billion for the levelling up fund.

Thanks to the long-term economic plan of former Chancellors we have been able to repair the roof while the sun was shining, which means we have been in a stronger position to deal with this crisis and have been able to swiftly put into action measures for our recovery. We have been able to invest in the furlough scheme, invest in business support grants, and put more money into the NHS.

The hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), on the Opposition Front Bench, spoke about the limits on council tax, but no one is forcing anyone to put council tax bills up. If councils do not want to do that—and I urge my own local council to take heed—we are not forcing them to do so. So I say to the hard-working families of Radcliffe, Whitefield and Prestwich that if their council tax bills go up, they have only one party to blame, and that is their local Labour council.

There are many things we should be proud of; instead we have an Opposition who, after 10 years of collective amnesia—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I call Liz Saville Roberts.

North of England: Infrastructure Spending

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gradually. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore). I do emphasise the term “Friend” because we go way back—before either of us took up a seat in this place.

I will start by touching on a point highlighted by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury): this is about not only hard infrastructure, but soft infrastructure. Unfortunately, I think he was approaching this from the wrong angle, and I much prefer the approach of my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell).

We think of infrastructure very much in terms of concrete, new roads and new rail links. To me, that is not what infrastructure is, or what levelling up is about; for me, it is about education, skills and those communities that we represent. How many times do we speak about large-scale planning applications and then say that there is no real infrastructure to support them, when what we actually mean is that there are no schools, doctors, dentists and real economic centres to support thousands of new homes? That is not just an approach that the Treasury needs to take when moving forward, but an approach that planning policy needs to adapt to to fully understand what is going on in our communities.

The white elephant of HS2 has been raised already in the debate. I have spoken in favour of it previously, and it is the right kind of approach. However, we cannot think of all roads leading to London, because that is a falsehood. People from the north should not be forced to choose between HS2 or HS3, just as the people of London were not forced to choose between Crossrail and Crossrail 2; they were able to have both, and they were able to have their cake and eat it—that is the point of having cake.

We do not necessarily want a quicker journey to London—again, it is a falsehood that HS2 is framed in terms of speed rather than capacity—but we do need to ensure that our northern towns and cities are linked together so that we can truly make the northern communities the economic powerhouse.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend is talking about HS2 and linking northern cities. There is a delay coming on phase 2b, as we have heard. Does he agree that we should look at this creatively and extend HS3 from Manchester to Leeds, so that we do not have to wait decades to link up northern cities?

[Christian Wakeford]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend; in fact, he framed that argument so succinctly that I do not need to add to it. As I said, the choice between HS2 and HS3 is a fallacy; we can, and should, have both.

In terms of the view that all roads lead to London, the economy is not driven by London; the economy is growing more and faster in the north than anywhere else in the country, and we need to support that.

Much of this east-west connectivity is also driven by the private sector. Drax wants to improve east-west connectivity so that it can ship its fuel source from Liverpool over to Hull. That is part of our green infrastructure recovery; it is about not just greener fuel but carbon capture, which is intrinsic to meeting our net zero target. When we focus on our infrastructure for the north, it truly has to be a soft infrastructure-led, community-led and community-driven process that we are all part of .

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore), whom I know well, for securing the debate. I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe): there is no right side of the Pennines. It is vital that all of us across the north stick together. Speaking as someone from Lancashire who represents a seat in the north-east, nothing is clearer than the need to improve trans-Pennine links, as well as north-south links.

[Christian Wakeford]

As we are both proud Lancastrians, my hon. Friend will agree that the best thing to come from Yorkshire is the road to Lancashire.

[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, but I do not want to create further division; I am trying to bring us all together.

North West Durham is a unique constituency, in that it has no dual carriageway and no railway line or stations. Local people, feeling rather fed up with being particularly left behind, last year voted for change, and for the first time elected a Conservative MP. On the Prime Minister’s promise to level up the country properly, I remember visiting the cricket club in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) with the Prime Minister after the election, and he doubled down on that pledge.

I hope that today’s spending review and future Budgets will see some cash flow through. I agree with several hon. Friends that levelling up is not just about infrastructure; it is about something broader than that. It is about providing opportunity—the opportunity for a person to get on, provide for their family, help lift an entire community, employ people and do the right thing. That is what many people in my community would like to see.

Oral Answers to Questions

Christian Wakeford Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

[Rishi Sunak]