Budget (Coventry)

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

We are very grateful to you, Ms Dorries, for your chairmanship of this important debate on the present economic situation in Coventry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) on securing this debate and I thank Mr Speaker for granting it.

I should like to develop a few of the points made by my hon. Friend. I want to draw the Government’s attention to them as they contribute to the highly unsatisfactory situation regarding jobs and the prospects for jobs in Coventry at the moment.

My first point relates to the review of the schools building programme. The situation in Coventry is particularly bad. All building was stopped and none was allowed to go forward. Even two schemes in my own constituency—Woodlands school and President Kennedy school—that were on the point of signature were refused. The Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) is aware that at present the main building of Woodlands school is propped up by scaffolding, and has been for the past two years. What family is likely to want their child to go to a school that is propped up by scaffolding and might collapse at any minute? That scheme should have been given the go-ahead because the school is not fit for present-day purposes. I know that such buildings are the subject of the current capital review that is going on. We are approaching the end of the first year of this coalition Government and the situation is no longer satisfactory.

Similarly, development at the President Kennedy school, which was on the brink of getting the go-ahead, was suddenly stopped. Again, it is a totally unsatisfactory situation. There are a number of other such schools. My hon. Friend mentioned others in his own constituency and in Coventry North East. The matter must be brought to head in the near future.

My hon. Friend mentioned the regional fund, which has been slashed by 70% in Coventry. Such a cut will have a major impact on the level of activity and on the number of schemes that can be carried out with Government support. Many projects could go ahead if we had quicker and easier funding for them.

Let me draw the Minister’s attention to transport. Not so long ago, we had a debate in this Chamber with the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers) in which we tried to thrash out alternatives to the massive High Speed 2 programme. Some £18 billion would need to be spent on the London to Birmingham route. What needs to be done urgently and would hugely contribute to employment activity in the Birmingham and Coventry area is simple four-tracking, which has to be done on the London to Birmingham route. Such a scheme is supported by Centro and local experts who say that it could make a huge contribution not just to employment but to the development of the region by bringing in activity and easing transport between Coventry and Birmingham, which is a very congested area of the west midlands. That scheme is not going ahead now because it has been earmarked to be done in five years’ time—if we are lucky—as part of an £18 billion build. It could be done under a rail package 2 proposal, which has been put up by the same consultants who are doing the HS2 work for the Government, at a fraction of the cost. With many areas under blight, many Conservative MPs in the south-east share our view that we should invest in the areas through which the rail already travels.

Similarly, there is the issue of the Knuckle project, which is the rail link between Coventry and the Ricoh stadium. It goes further north to Nuneaton and further south from Coventry. Again, it is local and regional and could get the go-ahead. We know that it has not been killed by the present Government; it is still there and is still a possibility. The project is estimated at about £18 million, which is chickenfeed compared with the scale of the investments that we are considering in other areas.

The schools schemes and the rail programme could be given the go-ahead and they would make a tremendous difference to the blight that we otherwise face in Coventry.

The last time we went through a similarly bad period was in the early 1980s. The car industry and the machine tool industry collapsed. Virtually all the mechanical engineering sectors that were located in Coventry collapsed. There was nothing much left at the end of that period and we still have not recovered. Although investment and development continued to take place in the country, much of it bypassed Coventry. We face the same problem again and it will affect those sectors that came in to replace manufacturing, notably the public sector. Becta and the QCDA have been closed. The council is announcing huge cuts. The whole public sector that came in to replace manufacturing—not much else came in apart from transport and delivery—is now facing the same sort of cuts at a time of severe recession and once again, Coventry will be pushed down.

I realise that time is limited and I will not go on any more. I have listed a number of specific projects that could be undertaken in the context of what the Government have available now for regional development. I urge the Minister, who has no direct responsibility for any of the projects, to push her colleagues who are responsible at least to consider them.