Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Dan Jarvis Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab) [V]]

The welcome retreat of covid masks the enormous damage it leaves in its wake and the colossal underlying problems it displaced from the public consciousness. Amid an almost unprecedented economic contraction, more and better jobs is perhaps the most urgent of those issues, but it is far from the only one. The giants of deprivation, division and environmental crisis have not slept while we fought the pandemic. They have grown ever greater to the point where they threaten to do unprecedented damage and perhaps even disintegrate our country. What this Queen’s Speech has again made clear is that this Government lack the ambition and the vision to meet this great challenge as they should. This Administration are about show more than substance, about politics more than purpose. They give the impression of action, while offering half measures so compromised and politicised that they are all too likely to fail.

That is especially evident in South Yorkshire, which already has large areas of deprivation. The long neglect of my region is a great injustice, but it is also a waste of colossal potential and an act of national self-harm that harms us all. In response, we have developed a road map for genuine transformation: not just recovery from covid, but a fundamentally stronger, greener and fairer region. It is the ambition we need for the whole country. We have leveraged devolved funding to create a £500 million renewal fund. We will be investing massively in everything from active travel and buses to our businesses and our young people. But transformation, at least with the urgency we deserve, needs the Government to do their part, too. They say that they are, but scratch the surface and things look different.

The Government’s flagship levelling-up fund is worth significantly less than the local growth fund it replaced. It puts the Chancellor’s Richmondshire constituency in a higher category of need than places such as Barnsley and Sheffield. A third of the English areas it will support are not among the top third of the most deprived regions. The vast majority of them are Conservative areas: penny pinching, pork barrel politics dressed up as transformation. It is a confidence trick.

It is not just about the money, however. We cannot level up without a clear goal and a coherent plan to get there. The Government are yet to even define levelling up beyond vague aspiration. Their investments are scattershot, not strategic. It is welcome that they have appointed a levelling up adviser and are planning a White Paper, but the fact it took them 18 months to do that speaks volumes. We need a fundamental rethink of levelling up.

Critically, that needs to happen alongside a fundamental strengthening of devolution. Even senior Conservatives such as George Osborne agree that we cannot recovery from covid or tackle deeper challenges from Whitehall, but the Government seem to have forgotten their promised devolution White Paper, along with their commission on wider constitutional change. Their fundamental lack of interest is evident in their imposition of piecemeal competitive funding pots, which open the door to politicisation, are poisonous to long-term strategic planning, and force local authorities to dance to Whitehall’s tune and not the needs of their own local community.

Devolution is needed as part of a much wider renewal of politics. The election in Scotland, while not the mandate the SNP is claiming, means the risk of the country disintegrating remains very real, but disillusionment cuts across the whole country. Rather than fight the problem at its roots with a genuine national conversation on reform, the Government are pushing voter ID and undemocratically forcing first-past-the-post voting on mayoral elections out of naked electoral self-interest. Responsibility for the country appears an afterthought compared to staying in power. Amid deprivation and division, our future really is on the line, and our Government are playing politics. I ask them to change course before it is too late.