Levelling-up Missions: East of England

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Thank you so much; that was very interesting. I remind Members that they need to bob to indicate that they want to speak.

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[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to energy shortly for another reason, and I will pick up on that point after I conclude on the issue of roads.

Essex is a net contributor, and the A12 and A120 are literally roads from the dark ages. They are deeply unsafe roads. If we care about road safety and the people who get up every day at the crack of dawn, such as lorry drivers and commuters, to service our public services or to come to London to provide services for major hotels and the UK’s service sector, we must upgrade these roads. It is becoming a joke right now—it really is. It is an insult to commuters and the people who use the roads who have to navigate the potholes and poor quality of the roads every single day. They feel, by the way, that they are getting an unfair deal when they fill up their cars because of the cost of fuel at the pump. This is not a criticism of the Minister’s Department, but it shows the breadth of issues that need to be grasped across Government on integration to provide those levelling-up outcomes. Otherwise, levelling up will just become a slogan.

I would like to touch on a couple of other areas, which are both linked. One is skills and education. I am proud not just to be the Member of Parliament for Witham, but to represent Essex and the east region. When I became the MP for Witham, the majority of my schools locally were in special measures or required improvement. I am pleased to say right now that we have great schools—good schools and outstanding schools—and, as a result, Witham is now a commuter town. People want to live and work there, and some schools are outstanding—that is a great thing. We need not just to give our youngsters great educational opportunities through our schools, but to ensure that they can get jobs and that they inherit skills for life. That could be skills within the region for the great energy coastline that we have developed over the past decade, which has been remarkable, and previous Ministers in Government should be thanked for their hard work on that matter.

Essex is a county of entrepreneurs, and I never tire of saying that. We are the home of small businesses and innovators, and R&D is big in Essex. However, our prosperity masks challenges when it comes to deprivation, as we have heard, but also skills, opportunity and aspiration. We need businesses to work with our schools and get their foot in the door to talk to pupils at an earlier age. I have a careers fair taking place on 24 March on Witham. I never tire of being a champion of those skills fairs, and we are bringing in businesses from former industries I have worked in to those schools. I want to see Government embrace that, because the apprenticeship levy is, quite frankly, not delivering the outcomes it was originally set up to deliver. I maintain that it needs reform. Of course, by getting those skills locally, we can create jobs with skills that focus on areas that Members have touched on already. I feel very strongly about that.

I want to touch on health, which has been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney said that we do not have a technology campus in the east of England—I agree, and we should work to achieve that—but we do have a university medical school. I was involved in the original bid to do the business case for that, and I am proud that we achieved it. However, I am afraid that our health infrastructure across the east of England is inadequate. Our patient-GP ratio is one of the highest in the country, and we are not training enough students in our medical schools. We need to do much more. When he was Health Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) worked well with us to deliver some good health outcomes, but there is much more that needs to be done. We are an ageing part of the country, but we must work with our young people to grow skills in health and social care. I pay tribute to Essex County Council for the work it is doing in that area.

This is a message to central Government: we cannot have people working in silos in Government anymore. When I was Home Secretary, the Health Department said to me, “Please do much more on health and social care visas,” which I am pleased that we have done—I did that as Home Secretary. However, there is more that we need to do in that area, and we also need more home-grown talent.

Finally, planning is the biggest issue in my constituency casework. Witham has become a building site over the past decade. We are building homes, and it is right that we do that. The question is, are they affordable homes? We have already heard of the high income ratio that is required to live in our fantastic part of the country. This point is specific to the Minister’s Department. Planning is contentious, and we are not getting it right in this country; there is no doubt about that.

In Essex, and in my constituency in particular, we stopped the West Tey development, a proposal for a garden community of 45,000 new homes—which, by the way, was without any infrastructure at all. The entire concept was an absolute scandal and a disgrace. I pay tribute to campaigners such as Rosie Pearson and others in my constituency who worked together to bring that to the Planning Inspectorate and get that proposal overturned. Five-year land supply has also been a problem, along with local councils that have no neighbourhood plans. I want to put on the record the fact that I think it is deeply disappointing that the Department, in its former guise as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, used taxpayers’ funds to boost and beef up that concept without working in a considered way with the local community on the kind of housing that was required.

I am afraid that this is not specific to the Minister’s Department. We are going through this all over again with another project: pylons. It is less about housing, but it will become a planning issue. The development of pylons across the east of England will, frankly, have a detrimental impact. We are pioneers in offshore grid wind farm development and renewables, and we must absolutely look to invest in that capability, rather than putting up more infrastructure that will bring great blight to our local communities and, I am afraid, agitate them even more.

I know I have taken up a great deal of time, Mr Davies. In conclusion, there are great things about the east of England. We are net contributors to His Majesty’s Treasury, and we cross-subsidise much of the United Kingdom through the hard graft of the great men and women of the east of England, but we are lagging behind on these key assets that are of national significance. My hon. Friend the Minister can only do so much with her remit in her Department. My wider message is about devolution and local government reorganisation, as well as about the size of the state in Whitehall; how bloated and unaccountable that has become, and how detached it is from the good men and women of the east of England who, as taxpayers, contribute to the bureaucracy of Whitehall and get very little back. That is where reform has to start. The devolution train is well under way now—certainly in our part of the country. In Essex, I back it. Quite frankly, we need reform of the core of Whitehall to start delivering for the good people of the east of England.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I call the last, but not least, of the Back Benchers, James Wild.

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[Peter Aldous]

We have had a very full debate. I will go through the contributions made by hon. Members and hon. Friends, and I will try to pull one or two things together out of those.

The hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) highlighted the importance of investment in health infrastructure and services. He is right to do so, because it is something that particularly concerns a great many of our constituents, and we must get that right. We have had a lot of discussion about the importance of rail, which I will come to in a minute. Being at the west of the region, he has highlighted the importance of East West Rail and, generally, in the east of England that can be a challenge.

We look so much north-south and at the roads to London; in fact, very often our road network is focused on the roads down to London. The A12 used to be a toll road from Yarmouth, and it was the main road serving that part of the area, and there was also the A10. Actually, those cross-country routes—whether they are the railways or the roads—are so important. In Suffolk or Norfolk, there is the A143, which links to Lowestoft but actually runs from Yarmouth right down on the county border through to Bury St Edmunds and down to Haverhill. That is a tortuous way to go down, so those cross-country routes are absolutely vital.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) emphasised the challenges faced by Jaywick and also highlighted the railways. Like me, his constituency is served by two railway lines, and he highlighted the slow, tortuous journey to Liverpool Street. From my perspective, on the East Suffolk line from Lowestoft to Ipswich the journey time has not improved since 1859. That is another particular challenge that we need to address.

A lot of our strategic investment in the coming years will be in the railways, but the road network is there and we must not forget it. There are pinch points and particular challenges. The A12 through Essex is heavily overused. Quite frankly, its activity justifies M status, but I do not think that will ever come, and we have to address that. Because of a lack of maintenance, a lot of our main roads are turning into little more than country tracks in some respects, which reminds me that there were most regrettable accidents on the B1062, which links Beccles to Bungay, over the new year period. I talked that through with the local community and the county council. The county council engineer is doing great work. He said, “We have analysed what happened and think there is a need for improvement, and you are now in the top 20% of our priority schemes.” I thought, “Great.” I said to him, “How many priority schemes do you have?” And he said, “Oh, 10,000”. That illustrates that investment in the existing network—

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that this should be a short winding-up rather than a full second speech.

[Peter Aldous]

I take that on board, Mr Davies. I thought I had a bit more time.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Just a few minutes.

[Peter Aldous]

That is fine. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) gave an impassioned speech, which emphasised the railways. She raised reform of the apprenticeship levy, which is vital, and investment in skills.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) raised digital connectivity, which, although a medium risk in the report, is a challenge in the east of England because of our dispersed population, which covers a relatively large geographical area. I also have an interest in the A47, which runs from the A1 and, one might say, begins or finishes in my constituency—in Lowestoft. It is good that work has been done on that. He is an impassioned campaigner for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The James Paget University Hospital, which serves my constituency, is going to be rebuilt. Investment in NHS buildings is important, as is addressing demand and the workforce.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), speaking for the Opposition, raised some interesting points, including the common challenges across the country and how the approach that we have adopted might be an exemplar elsewhere. He also highlighted the particular challenges of coastal communities.

I thought the Minister gave a tremendous speech. It is unfortunate that, as I understand it, we will be losing her. She gets it; there was no camouflaging, and she came straight to the point, for which I thank her.

To sum up—my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham got this right—we have to break out of departmental silos. Levelling up is not just for my hon. Friend the Minister’s Department but for all Departments. There were so many issues that were not necessarily for her to address in her remit; they cover the whole of Government. It is about thinking in a joined-up way down here in Whitehall and Westminster, and devolution to local authorities, which will be very important. My right hon. Friend also raised the fact that we have to bring business with us. I think the LEPs have been a success, because they have put business at the forefront. I am not sure about the future of LEPs, but whatever happens, business has to be there, working in partnership and in collaboration with local and national Government. [Interruption.] I see that you are getting impatient, Mr Davies, so on that point I will sum up. I thank all colleagues for their contributions to the debate and thank you for chairing it.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Thank you so much. We have certainly been levelling up the wind-ups.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered progress on the Government’s levelling up missions in the East of England.