David Rutley
Main Page: David Rutley (Conservative - Macclesfield)Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
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David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. It is an even greater pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I welcome you to it. I also express my support for those who have given their maiden speeches today. My hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) gave a fantastic speech, and I also congratulate the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Philip Boswell) on his splendid speech. No doubt he will be a great champion for his constituents.
Let me start where I finished at the end of my speech after the last Budget in March, when I noted that a lot had been done and that there was a lot more to do. I hoped that the voters of Macclesfield and across the country would vote for the Conservatives to carry on and do that important work. The good news from my perspective and that of Conservative Members is that voters delivered an historic victory for us. It is now down to us to deliver the long-term economic plan that those voters want us to deliver.
This Budget certainly delivers: spending is being controlled, the deficit is being reduced, taxes are being cut, and we are ensuring that work pays, as it must. Yet again we have a record overall employment rate—now at 73.4%—including a record employment rate for women at 68.6%. Two million extra jobs have been created under this Government. Our unemployment rate is half that of France—the socialist alternative that the Labour party presented as the blueprint for its plan B. We stuck with plan A, and—this is difficult for Labour Members to believe—the electorate stuck with us.
This Budget again shows the positive approach of Conservative Members. We are moving the British economy forward with more jobs and ever-greater success in creating the right economic conditions for balanced growth. Our GDP growth is leading the way in the developed world. Household spending is increasing, which I welcome. Even more welcome is the increase in business investment, which is up by 5.7% over the same year. Gross fixed capital formation in quarter 1 of 2015 was at its highest level ever recorded since the sequence was developed in 1997.
The right balance of policy measures is being put in place, from deregulation and incentives to work, to help to set up and grow a business and tax allowances for capital investment. All those things are creating the foundations for sustainable economic growth—something that the Labour party should learn more about.
There are now 4.5 million self-employed people in the UK. In Macclesfield, we have one of the highest levels of self-employment anywhere in the country. Those self-employed people are being supported and encouraged by the Government. I have worked with the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and Demos to highlight the issues around self-employment. I am greatly encouraged that the Prime Minister recently announced—with Julie Deane, the founder of the Cambridge Satchel Company—that there will be a full review of self-employment under this Government. Many of the self-employed are first-time entrepreneurs. I hope they can be encouraged to go on to become first-time employers and first-time exporters, further boosting the enterprise culture that we on the Conservative Benches cherish and want to foster. The enterprise Bill will help us to go further in that direction.
We are making progress and we are continuing to make progress. We want to do so by trusting businesses, trusting local enterprise partnerships and trusting local civic renewal. In the north-west, we look to Manchester to see what lead it is taking. Sir Howard Bernstein, of Manchester City Council, recently called for
“giving…the local control and might that a powerhouse needs.”
It is the northern powerhouse, in which the Chancellor has invested so much time, on which I would like to address the remainder of my remarks.
It has been a long journey from the great recession, but at the end of the tunnel we can see the northern lights of the northern powerhouse ahead of us. The lights are so bright, in fact, they have attracted the so-called prince of darkness himself. Peter Mandelson, no less, put himself forward as a prospective chancellor of the University of Manchester. These are not my words, but Lord Mandelson’s:
“something very exciting is happening in this region as part of the Northern Powerhouse”
and
“the Labour Party, I’m afraid, has a long way to catch up.”
I wonder whether the Labour party is in the mood to listen to him. I do not think so, judging by the comments made today.
We are making great strides in the north-west, particularly in terms of gross value added per head, which has grown by an annual 3.4% according to the Office for National Statistics, a record unsurpassed by other regions in the country. On a sub-regional basis, Cheshire is the only county in the north of England to have higher GVA per hour than the UK average, outperforming such sub-regions as what might be called “Greater Bristol”.
We in the north-west accept there is a long way to go if we want to be the economic equal of the southern powerhouse, London. As Sir Howard Bernstein has said, there is an £8.2 billion productivity gap between Greater Manchester and the rest of Great Britain on a per capita basis. Correcting that gap, as our policies are designed to do, matters for Britain. It matters to the market towns around Greater Manchester, too, the most important of which is, of course, Macclesfield.
David Rutley
It is well beyond that, thank you. [Laughter.]
These towns play a key role in the future productivity of the north-west.
I want to focus on science. On 10 June, the Prime Minister said that we needed to increase our productivity
“by encouraging entrepreneurship, by making sure we invest in success”—
and, I wish to emphasise this bit—
“by investing in science—these are the things that we have been doing as part of a long-term economic plan, mostly opposed by the Labour party. ”—[Official Report, 10 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 1187.]
Science, and in particular life science, is critical in our part of the world. Alderley Park, now owned by Manchester Science Partnerships, is key. AstraZeneca’s Macclesfield site alone accounts for 1% of UK goods exported; a driving force behind high-value, high-wage growth in Macclesfield, north-east Cheshire and south Manchester.
To play our part in future success across the north, we need to ensure that the Chancellor’s ambitions for science in Greater Manchester and beyond are fulfilled. Manchester has been selected as Europe’s city of science for 2016. There is plenty to showcase to academics and investors, not least Jodrell Bank Observatory, which is in part in the Macclesfield constituency. I am delighted that it has secured the Square Kilometre Array telescope project, and an additional £12 million of lottery funding to recognise the important and unique science heritage of the site.
In his speech on 14 May, the Chancellor said that Manchester was not yet as great as the sum of its parts, and the “Exploiting the Excellence” report by the very good North West Business Leadership Team supports that view. I am delighted that having recognised the problem, which Labour failed to recognise and act on, he is determined to do something about it. The Budget puts in place the conditions and key ingredients necessary for the northern powerhouse to evolve: leveraged investment in infrastructure, increased investment in science and other key industry sectors and a transfer of power away from Whitehall to the northern powerhouse itself. This is an important combination of factors and will have a multiplier effect.
In fact, we are seeing that already, with the promise of additional investment in the northern rail hub, HS2, HS3 and now the proposed £1 billion investment and 10-year transformation in Manchester’s international airport. Today, we also welcome the establishment of Transport for the North, a statutory body, and the £30 million of additional funding made available to assist with its duty of delivering a long-term transport strategy for the north. That is exactly what we need.
It is not just about the north or north-west, however; there are now devolution deals across the country, including in the Leeds city region, West Yorkshire, the Sheffield city region and Liverpool. Of course, success breeds success, and there are now reports of a powerhouse in the midlands too—the “midlands motor” or perhaps the “Mercian dynamo”. Whatever it ends up being called, I wish it every success.
I wish the Budget every success as well, because it is working to balance the books, to rebalance the tax burden, to rebalance the economy towards the enterprise economy we hold so dear and to rebalance our economic geography. I back that balance and I back this Budget.
Several hon. Members