Economic Development (Barnsley)

Debate between Gloria De Piero and Angela Smith

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Ms Clark. It is worth prefacing what I want to say in this debate with a few remarks about the town of Barnsley. It is a proud borough, which is characterised historically by the efforts of hard-working people. It now has a high proportion of welfare claimants, but let us remember that this area was at the heart of the fight for jobs in the 1980s. Coal miners in Barnsley fought a long, hard battle, at considerable personal cost, to keep their jobs—their battle cry was “Coal not dole”—so when we think of Barnsley as it is now, let us remember that this is an area in which people want to work. Their pride is built on their contribution to Britain’s economic performance in the past, a contribution that I would argue is not easily surpassed.

Seventy per cent. of Barnsley is rural. Indeed, part of it is in the Peak District national park. It is characterised not just by the most outstanding natural beauty that it is possible to find in the UK, but by a string of stately homes on the western side. That needs to be put on the record much more often than it is, because the images presented of Barnsley at a national level and in the media are invariably negative. Even some of those images presented in Parliament are incredibly negative. Those of us who live in the area know that Barnsley offers a superb quality of life. Perhaps Government themselves could do more to promote Barnsley as a place to live and work.

It is also important to put on the record that Barnsley had recovered to some extent from where it was about 15 years ago. It is now firmly in the global digital age, with a wide range of modern companies. If we now endure the humiliation of coal being taken to Barnsley, it is also true that Fosters bakery—one of the big employers in the town—sells its baguettes in France. The town has hidden secrets here and there, but a borough cannot live on bread alone, and Barnsley still has a long way to go.

Barnsley’s economy shrank by an alarming degree in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the demise of the coal industry left it bereft of alternative job opportunities. The inter-generational legacy of employment in hard manual labour—nowadays we talk about the inter-generational legacy of unemployment—was abruptly stopped and the social infrastructure provided by the largest employer in the town was withdrawn. That is often overlooked when we think of the social problems that are experienced in some of our ex-mining areas. We forget that one of the biggest providers of social and sporting opportunities was the coal board. The old social club network that was created in steel and coal has largely disappeared and has been left to fend for itself.

Recovery from that catastrophe was hard but, as I have said, progress was made only for everything to be sent backwards by the recession of 2008-09. Barnsley was always going to take longer to recover compared with other areas, but the recession and now the flatlining of the economy threaten the long-term recovery of that once great town.

It is not difficult to see what needs to be done. We need private sector growth in Barnsley—nobody has ever denied that or said any different. We need that growth to build the jobs and the sustainable prosperity that the borough so badly needs. We need to rebuild what has been lost in the local economy in the past 25 years. That is even more the case now thanks to the impending loss of public sector jobs, as the Government’s huge cuts bite locally.

Before outlining what the Government could specifically do to support economic growth in Barnsley, it is worth spelling out the extent of the barriers that Barnsley still faces and that hold the town back from realising its full potential. First, it needs placing on the record that Barnsley has the lowest job density rate in the Yorkshire region at 0.56. An extra 32,000 jobs would need to be created in the borough to reach the national level.

Secondly, Barnsley has a below average stock of business. It currently has around 4,920 VAT-registered businesses, which is a deficit of around 1,500 businesses compared with the regional average. Barnsley also has a higher than average concentration of businesses in risk averse sectors, for example, construction, retail and transport. Those sectors are likely to be affected by future economic uncertainty and limited short-term growth. Barnsley also continues to lag behind national and regional survival rates for new businesses.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is speaking powerfully about Barnsley. Many of the things she is saying could be said about other former coalfield areas. I am sure that she will go on to mention this, but is it not important for the Government to have a strategy for all the former coalfield areas?

[Angela Smith]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, the north-east, south Wales and Kent are all areas where the withdrawal of the UK from mining coal and from allowing coal to make a contribution to the UK national economy has had a massive impact that has never been fully appreciated down here. The task of rebuilding those areas has also never been fully appreciated. Let us face it, one of the difficulties is that the coal industry was built around small villages. It is not easy to replicate an economic activity that is built around a series of small villages. It is easy to do so in Sheffield, where there are huge tracts of land and an economic centre to build on, but Barnsley is 70% rural, as I am sure my hon. Friend’s constituency is.