Levelling Up: East of England

Esther McVey Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind hon. Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate. This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I also remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test before coming on to the parliamentary estate. Please give one another and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of levelling up in the East of England.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. I am also grateful to the secretariat and supporters of the all-party parliamentary group for the east of England, which I co-chair with the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), for the research that they carried out ahead of the debate, including their October 2021 publication, “Achieving Sustainable and Inclusive Growth: The East of England Offer”.

The east of England, traditionally known as East Anglia, comprises the easternmost counties of the United Kingdom: Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and also Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. The western and southern boundaries of the region are somewhat porous, and some of those living in, say, south Essex, parts of Hertfordshire and parts of Bedfordshire may not view themselves as being part of the east of England. That said, it is great that those three counties are so well represented in this Chamber this morning. Although at times understated, East Anglians are welcoming people. There is no hard border to the region, as the Devil’s Dyke was never completed and ceased to function well over 1,100 years ago.

Levelling up is in many respects the Government’s signature tune. The Prime Minister first spoke of the need to level up across Britain in his first speech as Prime Minister on 24 July 2019. The policy was the cornerstone of the Conservative manifesto at the 2019 general election, and we now eagerly await publication of the levelling-up White Paper, which will set out the strategy as to how levelling up will be delivered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Aldous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for doing so, and I apologise if my speech is somewhat focused on the east of East Anglia. He is quite right to highlight the challenges and opportunities in the south of the region.

Finally, I will say that full-fibre connectivity for all households and businesses is vital if East Anglia is to reach its full economic potential. There are projects to deliver that connectivity in many towns across the region, including Cityfibre’s £15 million investment in the network across Lowestoft. However, there is a concern that digital deserts may emerge in some rural areas, so it is vital that the Government’s Project Gigabit programme is ramped up and is fully comprehensive.

For East Anglia to realise its full economic potential and provide local people with the opportunity to work in the exciting new emerging industries, a skills revolution is needed. The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill provides the framework to deliver that revolution, but there is a concern that the region may again be bypassed.

Sizewell C is an enormous project, which can bring great benefits to Suffolk, Waveney and further afield. It is estimated that during the 12-year construction period, £2 billion will be put into the Suffolk economy. During that period there will be three apprenticeship cycles and 1,500 apprenticeships. There is an opportunity to leave an enduring legacy of knowledge and skills, which in the long term—once Sizewell C is completely constructed and becomes operational—can make Suffolk and Waveney a compelling location in which to set up and grow a business.

Sizewell C is exactly the sort of project that requires a gear change in training, which an institute of technology would help to deliver. However, the proposal from the University of Suffolk, East Coast College, the College of West Anglia and Norwich University of the Arts has not been successful in the institute of technology competition, in which the second wave of successful bids has just been announced. In the first two waves, 21 institutes of technology have been created, which provide comprehensive coverage across the country; and yes, there is one at South Essex College at Chelmsford, but there is a vacuum in the east. I will follow this matter up with the Minister for Higher and Further Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), to find out why the bid for our area was rejected, but there is alarm that the necessary investment is not being made locally to ensure that the region fully benefits from the exciting opportunities that are emerging.

I have spoken for far too long; I must allow others their say. Generally, I am excited about the future economic prospects for East Anglia, as they provide the opportunity to reverse 40 years of economic decline in coastal communities such as Waveney. However, I have concerns that these issues are not fully taken into account in the emerging levelling-up strategy. In the east of England, it is crucial that the Government recognise the challenges faced in many coastal, rural and urban communities, and that they upgrade connectivity and invest in skills. If we do not do these things, we will not eliminate those deep pockets of deprivation, there will be a negative spin-off across the UK and the region’s ability to continue to be a net contributor to UK plc will be in peril. I hope that the Minister can allay these concerns in his summing-up.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

We want to get to the Front-Bench spokespeople by just before 10.45 am—that is five minutes for the Opposition spokesman and 10 minutes for the Minister. We are well supported today, with lots of people wanting to speak, so there will be a limit of four minutes per speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this important debate. He represents the most easterly constituency in the east of England, and I probably represent the region’s most westerly constituency, so there is a nice balance.

Levelling up is about being inclusive and making sure that people really are able to achieve the best of their opportunity. It is not always about money—my apologies if that is controversial. As a Conservative, I believe it is about empowering communities to help themselves as much as it is about giving them a ladder to raise themselves up. It is not just about business, but about education, health, transport, broadband—especially in rural areas such as mine—and high streets.

My constituency of South West Hertfordshire has great transport links, north to south, to London. As someone who commutes every day, the worry that I have is about the east-to-west transport links. If I were to go to the neighbouring constituency of Hemel Hempstead or Watford, it is a bit of a nightmare from where I live, whereas getting to London or Birmingham is relatively easy.

It is a real shame that one of my more affluent villages, Belsize, has a really poor mobile telephone signal as well as really poor broadband. During the global pandemic, when people were reliant on home deliveries and on communications that they were not normally used to, that became quite profound. One of my personal tasks and ambitions is to resolve these things over my parliamentary career. Levelling up is not always about spending money; it is actually about making communities viable for private sector businesses to get more involved.

As a former furniture retailer, I remain quite concerned about the level of usage of our high streets. I would argue that we have seen businesses with a real customer focus survive and prosper during the global pandemic, but I say to residents and communities up and down the country that if they value their high streets, they need to use them. It is all well and good using high streets during the global pandemic, but if people want to retain their local butcher or grocer, they need to use them in better times as well.

Healthcare remains a really big issue in my constituency. I have Watford General Hospital down in the south, and St Albans City Hospital to the east. Although I may not have an acute hospital in my constituency, healthcare remains a big issue because of my ageing population, and I look forward to hopefully having further conversations with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on how we ensure that we are able to offer first-class health provision, which is not necessarily always aligned with the big white elephant that a primary acute hospital may be regarded as.

Although my constituency of South West Hertfordshire is regarded as an affluent area, there is quite a large commuter population. About 10,000 people use public transport to get to work—that is quite a dated figure, and obviously from before the pandemic—which is a significantly higher number than the average in the east of England and nationally. Making sure that local transport provision is having an impact—while not necessarily being the most expensive—will ensure that people can stay in the community and do not have to resort to moving to more urbanised areas. I would argue that that is a better outcome for the community.

Right hon. and hon. Members have spoken about development. I represent a community that is 80% green belt, which remains a big issue, and I look forward to further discussions on what levelling up means for housing numbers and population growth post pandemic.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I thank everybody for keeping to time, because we managed to get in everybody who wanted to speak. We will now move to the Front-Bench spokespeople.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I sincerely thank the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

I will confess that I love fielding debates for the Opposition in this place. No other parliamentary moment offers the chance to hear the hon. Member for Waveney talk in such depth and with such thoughtfulness to make his case. I was glad to be here and learn plenty from it, as I am sure the Minister did, although I have my own reflections. It set the tone for what has been a brilliant debate. He said at the beginning that his purpose was to highlight the possibility of the east of England being ignored by the levelling-up White Paper and to seek to avoid that. I suspect he managed that with aplomb, with the support of colleagues across party. His case was very well made.

As the hon. Member said, it has been two and half years since the Prime Minister spoke of the need to level up Britain. Two and half years later we are still waiting to find out what that means. It appears we may not have to wait too much longer. I hope the Minister will give us a little sneak preview among friends, including a sense of the timing, though I suspect he might wish to keep his powder dry, as might I to an extent. I might disappoint the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) who wants a detailed response and an alternative, but the Government will have to show their hand first. After all, we have waited two and half years. The case made around regional and local authority disparities is important. As the conversations on levelling up evolve, that will become even more important.

I will reflect on contributions from colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the East of England, made an important point about the London effect. We need to have that understanding at a regional, sub-regional and local authority level about how data can be skewed. So that, in trying to ensure that communities are not left behind—not a great phrase but we know what it means—we do not create a new collection of left-behind areas.

I share a lot of the frustrations of my hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) and for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) around how things have been done previously. It is sad, avoidable and reductive, and does not serve an agenda of trying to move the country forward together, that we seem to be constantly pitted against each other in bidding rounds, where some must be winners and others must be losers. The funding is one off, so maybe someone wins today and loses tomorrow, or vice versa. In reality, no community that has been funded through levelling-up programmes so far that is not worse off when losses to the local authority are taken into account. That test must be passed, and it must be a comprehensive settlement that everybody has a stake in.

I will reiterate a point made by colleagues of all persuasions. The Opposition do not accept the framing of levelling up as north versus south. That was a point made by the hon. Members for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew). I represent one of the poorest communities in the country, based in the east midlands, and I hate the assumptions that come with that. That cuts both ways and I should not make assumptions about communities that might be better off according to their top lines. I should not assume that that is a place with streets paved with gold, with no social problems, challenges or pockets of deprivation. That is not what the evidence shows.

This is an all-regions approach, and the east of England is a study in that. Taken as a whole, looking at those top lines, the region is a net contributor, with an above average GDP growth rate over the past decade, which is forecast to continue, above average employment, below average unemployment and above average house prices. That would suggest that the east of England is fine and that levelling up should happen elsewhere. As we have heard, the reality is different. There is a different experience for those in the south of the region, which makes up the London commuter belt, while much of East Anglia would not. Even within those communities, there are pockets of deprivation.

We have heard that there are many areas that suffer high levels of deprivation. Those could be coastal communities, such as Lowestoft, referred to by the hon. Member for Waveney, Great Yarmouth just up the coast, and Clacton-on-Sea, as the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) mentioned, or they could be rural areas with associated challenges, such as Thetford, March and Wisbech, or parts of cities such as Peterborough and Norwich.

When the levelling-up White Paper is finally published, that nuanced understanding of regional variation will be one of the tests by which colleagues will judge it. However, the key point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South made in a couple of different contexts, is not just adopting the same approaches, because they will get the same outcomes. He made an important point about sustainability, saying that levelling up is not just about helping different communities to catch up on the same development model, because we know the impact that will have. That is profoundly true globally, and the question of how we support global development so that we do not just repeat the old models is a thorny question that we must address. However, it is true at home, too.

The East of England Local Government Association’s analysis of the autumn Budget was interesting, showing once again that 40% less—considerably less—was being made available for the east of England than for other areas. Of course, that was repeated in round one of the levelling-up fund bid, with just three of the seven of the region’s priority 1 projects having success. The EELGA is worried and says there is a clear risk that other deprived areas in the east of England will be left out and left behind, presumably on account of the wider region’s overall performance. Again, that creates a profound challenge, which applies across the region.

Transport is another key theme. I dare say that the Minister and I will participate in a lot of debates about different regions and different communities, which I very much look forward to, and transport will be a constant theme. It sometimes felt necessary to have an A to Z to follow things in this debate, but the sheer volume of A roads referred to was illustrative, telling us an awful lot about the natural geography and the infrastructure of the east of England, and about the challenges that come with that sort of road. The focus over the last year has been more on city region settlements, particularly around rail, but that focus alone clearly will not pass the overall test, because otherwise this becomes a long-running, self-perpetuating cycle.

The publication of the White Paper really ought to be the moment that that cycle is broken, because many rural and coastal communities—across the country, but particularly in the east of England—have faced significant challenges for a long time. As the hon. Member for Waveney said, over the past 40 years good jobs have left the region and not always been replaced, forcing young people to leave the area and seek opportunities elsewhere, taking their spending power away with them, which causes high streets to struggle, local institutions to decay and transport networks to close down. And so it goes, and so it goes. More of that decline just begets even more and more, until we break the cycle.

I will conclude there, because I know that colleagues will be keen that the long list of issues that have been put to the Minister are all comprehensively addressed, with a commitment today to addressing them. However, I will just say finally that in preparing for this debate, I thought that we were perhaps a couple of weeks—three or four weeks—too early, and timing is everything in politics, because we do not yet know what the Government will say on levelling up, I suspect that they may not quite know themselves yet what they will say. Actually, though, the timing for this debate was perfect, because the east of England offers an illustrative case of what has happened in the past, which we do not want to see repeated, and it is better for the Minister to hear that before the Government make their statement than it would be afterwards. I look forward to hearing his response to the debate.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister to respond, and also mention that Peter Aldous needs a couple of minutes at the end to wind up the debate.